Evolution

Anthroposophy, with its alchemical emphasis on the balancing of polarities, brings several gifts to the ongoing evolution of the environmental movement. These gifts include a cosmic holism that challenges us to attend to ever-widening circles of interconnection; a homeopathic model of social change that invites us to use subtle influences to heal the world; an appropriate anthropocentrism that allows us to experience ourselves as fully at home in the world; and a vision of planetary transmutation that can resist climate change while embracing biological and spiritual evolution.

Ecology

Anthroposophy occupies a distinct ecological niche within the broader environmental movement. Its commitment to Goetheanism sets it apart from academic science; its understanding of social justice differs from that of the mainstream left; and its stress on the human role in cosmic evolution can create tension with Gaian critiques of anthropocentrism. The relationship between anthroposophical initiatives and the Anthroposophical Society also shapes the way it interacts with other forms of environmentalism. Yet the boundaries between anthroposophy and other impulses can be sites of transformative dialogue.

Roots

Biodynamic agriculture grew steadily in the decades after Rudolf Steiner’s death, giving rise to an international organics movement by 1940. Three distinct groups of people spread the biodynamic impulse: “evangelists,” who actively promoted Steiner’s teaching; “translators,” who expressed the core ideas of biodynamics in non-anthroposophical language; and “allies,” who were primarily committed to other forms of organic practice. Thus, the organic movement was shaped by evangelist Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, translator Lord Northbourne, and allies Eve Balfour and J. I. Rodale. A generation later, it bore new fruit in the anti-pesticide impulse initiated by evangelists Marjorie Spock and Polly Richards and ally Rachel Carson.

Branches

Anthroposophy was as central to 1970s environmentalism as biodynamics had been to the organic movement of the 1930s and 1940s, and the increase in environmental activism came at a time of dramatic transformation within the anthroposophical movement. The emphasis shifted from Steiner’s spiritual teaching toward his practical initiatives, which grew rapidly and attracted the support of Baby Boomer idealists. Evangelists Francis Edmunds, Henry Barnes, and Herbert Koepf helped expand the anthroposophical movement, while translators George Trevelyan, Alan Chadwick, and Joseph Beuys brought anthroposophical ideas into the New Age movement and the Green Party. Newer initiatives inspired by anthroposophy include “Goethean” research centers, farm internship programs, and innovative projects in Egypt, Bhutan, the Philippines, and Israel.

Seed

Anthroposophy’s diverse environmental initiatives all sprouted from the “seed” of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual teaching, given in books and lectures during the first decades of the twentieth century. Steiner was a complex teacher: a modern interpreter of Western esoteric traditions, an evolutionary thinker who proposed a spiritual alternative to Darwinian materialism, and an idealistic social reformer. Steiner’s Agriculture Course of 1924, which initiated biodynamic agriculture, expressed the holistic worldview characteristic of all environmental impulses, insisting that “in great Nature, everything is connected.” But Steiner’s holism extended beyond planet Earth to encompass the whole cosmos, including spiritual powers he claimed to access through alchemical and homeopathic practices.

Fruit

Anthroposophy’s contribution to environmentalism is evident not only in biodynamic agriculture and green banking but also across the spectrum of anthroposophical initiatives. One of the most holistic movements inspired by Steiner is the international network of Camphill communities, where people with and without developmental disabilities share daily life and work, often in agricultural settings. Camphill communities often function as innovative ecovillages, embracing carbon-neutral energy systems, biological wastewater treatment, and a variety of social enterprises. By linking concern with the natural world to concern for human health and well-being, they challenge the environmental movement to broaden its vision of ecology.

Flowers

Rudolf Steiner’s teaching on economics, along with his broader social theory of “threefolding,” inspired the emergence of green banking and community-supported agriculture in the 1970s and 1980s. Steiner taught that economics, politics, and culture represent three distinct social spheres, each with its own inner processes; he also taught that the economic sphere should be characterized by “fraternal” cooperation. This idea inspired a cluster of short-lived cooperative enterprises just after World War I and was revived with greater success beginning in the 1970s. Anthroposophical banks and social finance organizations include GLS Bank, Triodos Bank, and RSF Social Finance in the United States. The cooperative principles that govern the banks contributed to the evolution of social entrepreneurship and “B-corps” and inspired biodynamic farmers to create community-supported agriculture, in which a community of consumers shares the costs and risks of maintaining a farm.