The Imagery of the Goetheanum Windows

Diagram 6 Click image for large view [ +/- size controls in inset header ]

VIOLET WINDOW IN THE SOUTH

‘It arises’ — ‘Es entsteht’

Man's Ego speaks in lofty Spirit spheres,
As he inclines to a new earthly life:

My being still is open to the world divine.
It gave me Janus-like a twofold countenance;
The one turns back to former lives
Whence, issue of my one-time deeds,
My coming life shall take its form.
The second to the future turns its gaze;
With eyes cast down it sees how spirit-germ
Of my new earthly form escapes my hand.
Dropping to parents two it finds the way
Who on earth meet lovingly
In order to receive me in their love.
This spirit-germ is bearer of my individual being.
With father first it will unite
Who will imprint the essence of my self
Into the universal human image
That mother-powers towards him bring.
She is by ether-streams enveloped
Which from humanity's primeval form
Create the threefold body's vessel,
As image of the trinity divine.
I see them opening towards me as a flower —
My astral, my etheric self indrawing —
And member them in the stream of earth
In which will pass away
All that in it arises.

In threefold manner now my self
Will be enwoven in earth's being.
In it to find myself as I pass through,
Threefold the fruit that I must wrest from it
For my eternal being.
For such it means that I am born.



VIOLET WINDOW IN THE SOUTH — LEFT SIDE

‘It shall be’

The Sun Beings speak:

Descending to dark depths from out our spheres
That close themselves to him,
His childlike being now strives downward.
Still is he translucently
By streams of Sun illumined
Till they dismiss him further to the Moon.
The earthly sphere spreads its dark vault before him
In which the forms of stars are mirrored.
He plunges now into the darkness.

Will he forget us not in his new life?



VIOLET WINDOW IN THE SOUTH — RIGHT SIDE

‘It is’

The Moon Beings speak:

His childlike being has trustingly itself confided
To us, that we may lead him from our spheres
Into his mother's womb
Which now on earth receives him.
The sleep of consciousness has cast
A shadow o'er his being,
And starry forms are darkened all.
But now transformed they shine again,
As seeds within the dark earth body
Rounding their forces to organic form.

Man has become a child of earth.

Diagram 7 Click image for large view [ +/- size controls in inset header ]

VIOLET WINDOW IN THE NORTH

‘It has been’

The departed speaks:

By veils of sadness shrouded,
There by my bier my dear ones stand.
If only men could know how Light
Bears up the soul, that from the body
Frees itself, on waves of colour,
Hovering, expanding and translucent,
So that before his spirit vision — suddenly awakened —
A wondrous landscape is spread out!
Within it he experiences his path of life,
Like some great river winding
Alternately to light and darker shores.
As aged and bent old man he sees himself, but
Steeped in the light that death — now close
At hand — bestows on him.
And further back he sees how destiny's wise guidance
Brought man and wife together,
To fashion life one with the other.
From radiant stars the soul this strength draws forth.
Now it is clear: in early youth
Wherein the I was born
It turned to those same stars
Choosing them for goals of life. —
A gloomy mountain rises up behind him
And its death-forces tower threateningly,
Surmounted in its skull-like form
By crosses three, but steeped in light
That penetrates the gloom,
Sheltering the little child, as in an egg-shaped aura
Within its cradle, lovingly.
Now I perceive, this Light of Love
It has stayed true to me on my life's way. —

Have I been conscious of it all my days?

The solemn eye of God
To my life's course I see directed.
And now his power of judgement, courageously
I must with my own consciousness unite,
Myself must read the law of Karma,
As luminous on stony tablets it shines forth.
Not till my life has been lived through
A second time within that light
And I have deeply felt the will
To compensate for my shortcomings,
Dare I to hope that lofty spheres of Sun
Will receive me back again,
And threefold source of being
Which — streaming out from Spirit heights
Released me when to earth existence I
Was born — will once more welcome me.

It has been — it must be again.



VIOLET WINDOW IN THE NORTH — LEFT SIDE

‘It had become’

The Angelos of Man speaks:

Behold! Thus I held over thee
Thine everlasting being when
Thou wast bound to earthly life:
Thy very I: a radiant beauteous star
Which shone above thy head.

Thy being of soul in threefold form shone forth,
In thinking, feeling, willing pure,
In order to unite with earthly I,
Bestowing human features on thy countenance.

In darkest ground the power of the heavenly
Bull Thy being created, imbuing it with earthly substance;
But active forming forces of thine I
Victoriously have vanquished matter's slavery,
And even death in thee have stamped in human form.

So was a skeleton in thee implanted,
To give support to earthly Ego's growth.
Dying, thou couldst in gratitude release it.
Decaying in the earth's dark womb,
It will illuminate it with man's image
And so rejuvenate the earth.



VIOLET WINDOW IN THE NORTH — RIGHT SIDE

‘It was’

Man sitting in the cave speaks:

When at the end of my last earthly life
The gate of death drew back its bolts
And my own heavenly being from me was freed
In order to ascend to starry spheres,
Here on the border I remained,
Between the earth and spirit land,
In yonder ether-realm where heaven's Lion is master.
Here will I wait for future golden times
Which ravens calling shall reveal to me,
Who, watchful, circle round the mountain peak.

The heavenly powers above me show
My earthward-striving higher being
The way to my own being, that it unite with me again
And free me from this cave's loneliness
That holds me fast, till in new life on earth
I work in it from out the force of Karma.