The Harvest, and the Criticism It Attracts

Anthroposophy is the Western esoteric movement with the largest footprint outside its own membership, and it is worth listing what came out of it. The first Waldorf school opened in Stuttgart in 1919 for the children of workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory, and there are now well over a thousand such schools worldwide. Biodynamic agriculture comes from a course of lectures Steiner gave to farmers in 1924 and is the oldest organised organic farming system, with its own certification. The Camphill communities for people with learning disabilities began in Scotland around 1940. Weleda, founded in 1921, is a substantial pharmaceutical and cosmetics company. The Goetheanum at Dornach, rebuilt in concrete after the first building burned at the end of 1922, is a landmark of expressionist architecture.

The criticism is equally concrete and should not be omitted. Steiner's writings contain a hierarchy of races and root races that is racist by any ordinary reading, and anthroposophical bodies have had to address it publicly rather than explain it away. Anthroposophic medicine is not supported by the standard evidence base, and vaccination rates in some Waldorf communities have been low enough to be associated with outbreaks. Biodynamics adds ritual preparations to organic practice for which no mechanism has been demonstrated.

Both lists are true at once. An account that gives only one of them is not describing the movement.