The plant kingdom is the perfect revelation of the presence and the working of the ocean of life, the etheric world. There, where the etheric element is presence, there is life: where it is absent, the material world reveals only death.
Plants show us how the etheric element can take hold of matter and lift it into light. It can reach into the darkest recesses of the material world and lift it up, creating the universe of living forms.
And in this living universe, nothing exists for itself alone: everything is woven into an ecosystem of mutual support. Plants reveal this as a pure revelation: the entire multiplicity of plant forms is woven into the great kingdom of plants, all interconnected in a totality of living beings.
From Rudolf Steiner we have wonderful descriptions of the beings of plants. The ego of the plants is located in the center of the earth, which causes the roots of the plants to grow downwards into gravity and darkness and anchor themselves there. Underground, all the plants are communicating with one another in wordless cooperation.
Above, however, the plants strive heavenwards, and with the help of the elemental beings they weave their constantly evolving bodies out of water, air and light. The forces of the etheric world are peripheral, non-gravitational forces of levity. These draw the plant upwards towards the light, towards the sun and the stars. Before our eyes, matter is enchanted into form as the plant grows, leaf by leaf. From root to leaf, to flower, the life force sprouts, grows, adapts and changes. In the flower, it unfolds in ever higher octaves of fragrance and color. Finally, the plant reaches its perfection: there is no more to achieve except to allow itself to die and away, and in the process to completely give its own essence away in fruit and seed, and become flesh and food to bless the world and bestow gifts for the future.
We, too, together with the animal kingdom, have a plant nature. By virtue of the fact that we have an etheric body that permeates our entire body, we are alive: death occurs when the etheric body withdraws and the material world reveals its own nature. By working with plants and by studying them with loving attention, we can learn to perceive and understand the miraculous ways of life.
But this etheric element is not bound merely to the living plants. The etheric element is indeed one of the many manifestations of Spirit, one step less-dense that the material world. The etheric world permeates the entire world of nature: we virtually swim in it when we walk in nature! The etheric world reaches into the separate life forms of different creatures and unites them into living communities, ecosystems of interweaving forces.
This etheric world is especially relevant to our work in eurythmy! In eurythmy, we learn to perceive etheric forces, both within ourselves and in the space around us. We learn to feel and respond to our own etheric body. With practice, we learn to move our physical body from out of consciously moving our etheric body, thus responding to the living forces of anti-gravity. We learn to feel the living-ness of the space in us and around us, and experience that we can mold it and sculpt it with our articulate movements. In doing so, we actually give a gift back to the spirits of the world, for we are etherically gifting our best, loving energy back to the space we are moving through.
Each year at Christmas the earth forces are renewed when the Spirit of Love once again renews its sacred connection to the earth by stooping low from out of the heavens and uniting with all the kingdoms of nature. The blessing awakens first in the mineral kingdom in the beginning of Advent, and then proceeds to the plant kingdom in the second week.
This Spirit of Love, the light and life of the world, is as big as the entire universe and as intimate as the smallest molecule on earth. We have only to bestir our own selves to look for this love, and we will find it.
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