Easter: Rudolf Steiner’s Watercolor Painting

By Angela Lord. SteinerBooks, 2011, 79 pgs.

Review by David Taulbee Anderson

Rudolf Steiner’s painting, Easter, is taken as the subject of meditation for this book. The author, who has worked with the Easter motif as a painter for many years, approaches the picture out of her experience with color and her research into anthroposophical and other sources on the esoteric significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. A history of the crucifixion as a theme in art leads us into our contemplation. Other references are the apocryphal gospels that illuminate the picture’s theme, which is the descent of Christ into hell on the Saturday after the crucifixion. The author explores what took place in the realm of the dead from many angles, and also discusses how the twenty-third psalm is related to the picture, using it as a means of understanding its depths. Other references are Rudolf Steiner’s Soul Calendar, and an account of the ancient Adonis festival.

Part 2 leads us into the most significant means of understanding the picture, color itself. The author demonstrates how the powerful polarities of above and below, and light and darkness, are mediated by the rainbow bridge of colors. She explores the activities of the individual colors and their expressions in a way that draws the reader into their being and essence, so that they become a language that can be read by the soul through heightened feelings imbued with meaning. The section concludes with Rudolf Steiner’s rainbow meditation.

Part 3 examines the background of the Mystery of Golgotha and its cosmic aspects, particularly the sun and moon, since Easter as a movable festival is determined by the interplay of these two planets. The author also looks at the other planets and their related colors. Finally, she invites readers to delve more deeply into this important subject by suggesting possible ways to paint the motif oneself as a means of entering into the life of the theme.

Christ’s deed of bringing the dead into the light of consciousness was not only important for the actual deceased individuals—patriarchs and prophets—who had been held captive in the underworld in a dampeneddown condition of consciousness, but for us, too, here in our earthly lives. The underworld part of our consciousness that is submerged in darkness can also be given new forces of life, or resurrection forces. Color is the bridge into these dark realms, and it is our feeling that uses color as a vehicle for going beyond the realm of dead abstractions. The author shows how the third hierarchy, which includes the angels, creates the world of color in which imaginative pictures appear. It is possible to go through these pictures, glowing in color, to the darkness behind them where inspirations sound toward us and living meaning fills us from a world that was previously dark and unconscious.

Our culture today, which is still dominated by dead thinking that lacks imagination, can benefit from cultivation of the type of willing-feeling-thinking that characterizes this study. The book can help readers develop the sensitivity needed to overcome the type of thinking that is bound to physical processes and matter. The Easter event can be a force in our lives that draws us out of the tomb of materialism and allows us to participate in the life forces that mold our world. Through this participation, we learn to experience directly the upbuilding and coming-into-being of existence and truly live in the springtime of the world. Easter takes us on a journey where we must courageously face the underworld of the dead to find new life, eternal, springing up from the resurrection forces that Christ implanted into the depths of hell. This is not a book to be read casually; rather, it can be used as a means of finding the living wells that must be worked for. Just as Virgil served Dante as a guide through the Inferno, so Angela Lord is an excellent guide for modern people to take that necessary preliminary journey before entering the realms of the blessed.