Anthroposophical Society

The Anthroposophical Society is the organisational body of Anthroposophy, the spiritual philosophy developed by Rudolf Steiner, and it is distinctive for how much of its influence has been indirect and practical rather than doctrinal.

A path of knowledge

Steiner defined Anthroposophy as a path of knowledge leading the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe, and taught that a supersensible world can be investigated with a discipline as exact as that of natural science, through the methodical cultivation of higher organs of perception. He led the German Section of the Theosophical Society from 1902 but broke with it, above all over the proclamation of Krishnamurti as the coming world-teacher, and founded the independent society in 1912 to 1913, more Western and Christian in orientation. Its centre is the Goetheanum at Dornach in Switzerland, the first of which, a great wooden building, burned at the turn of 1922 to 1923 and was rebuilt in concrete.

The outgrowths

What has spread most widely is not the doctrine but its applications: Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine, and the arts of eurythmy. These reach far beyond the membership of the society, and many who encounter them do not know their source, which makes Anthroposophy one of the most quietly influential of modern esoteric movements. Steiner refounded the society in 1923 to 1924, shortly before his death in 1925.

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.