An Examination of Childrens Senses,

the Damaging Effects of the Media

and the
Therapeutic Possibilities of Puppetry

1
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 An Examination of Childrens Senses,
the Damaging Effects of the Media
and the
Therapeutic Possibilities of Puppetry

M.Sc. Thesis
(Waldorf Education)

by
Margaret M. Shams-Zandjani

Rome
Easter 2002

Cover photograph: Silk marionettes in a performance of The Queen Bee.

Here the queen bee shows the youngest prince which of the three princesses
is the youngest she had eaten honey just before she fell asleep.

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4
 Contents

Part A. The Theory

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Chapter 1. What children need for healthy development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Chapter 2. What children receive sensory damage, particularly from television. . . . . . . . . . . 29
Chapter 3. Puppetry and how it can heal sensory damage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Part B. The Practice

Chapter 4. The genuine fairy tale. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Chapter 5. Music, songs and narration for puppet shows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Chapter 6. Some practical guidelines for puppetry performance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Bibliography

Appendix
1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
2. Evolution of human consciousness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
3. A brief history of music. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4. A brief history of puppetry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5. Fairy tales and stories for the seasons of the year. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
6. Some interpretations of fairy tale images. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
7. Choosing Fairy Tales for Different Ages by Joan Almon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
8. Colour indications for puppets and marionettes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
9. Directions for making tabletop (free-standing) puppets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
10. Directions for making marionettes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
11. Performance tips. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
12. Some scientific information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

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 Part A. The Theory

Introduction

Puppetry is the healing for the ills of modern civilisation.

These intriguing words of Rudolf Steiner provided the starting point for this
research. As such ills affect children more than adults and as it is children who are
more likely to watch puppet performances, it is primarily children who have been kept
in mind.
The senses are childrens only source of learning and knowing. This study therefore
begins with an examination of the needs of the young child for healthy development
and particularly in terms of the development of the senses and of the kind and quality
of the childs sense impressions. In reality, most children are bombarded daily with
strong and inappropriate sense impressions deleterious to their health and development.
These particularly come from modern technology, mainly the visual media and
principally from television. In the context of the young child, the words: the ills
of modern civilisation can therefore be interpreted today as the damage caused by
machines and in particular by television, computer, films and electronic games. The
negative effects of television and its damage to the delicate, developing senses of the
young child are examined in depth in the second chapter.
Puppet shows are discussed next to show how they can provide a unified sense
experience of high quality and a rich, enlivening sense nourishment. The essential
quality of a puppet is that it moves. Even a piece of knotted fabric is sufficient to make
one. A puppets composition and any technique are overlooked by those watching who
focus on the character. Puppet theatre is made up of two parts, the second being in the
minds of the audience. A puppet is captivating; it rivets the attention. It is a marvellous
stimulation to the imagination. A genuine fairy tale such as one collected by the
Brothers Grimm is an ideal story for a puppet show. The experience of Waldorf school
puppetry performances for the young child is described to attain an understanding
of how puppet performances address and can heal the childs senses, rhythm and
breathing. The healing to the soul of the child that fairy tales can bring is also
recounted. How the phrase Puppetry is the healing for the ills of modern civilisation
rings so true today is argued in the conclusion.
In the second half of this thesis, some practical guidelines are given for potential
puppeteers to help those who would wish to bring this healing to young children.
Genuine fairy tales are examined, as their portrayal by puppets brings the deepest
healing. Additional relevant information and data collected in this research are
contained in the Appendix.

6
 Chapter 1.
What Young Children Need
for Healthy Development
Introduction
As children grow and develop from birth
to the age of 13 or 14, they repeat the stages of
human consciousness through which humanity
has passed over aeons of time. Good education
seeks to meet a childs needs and nurture
developing capacities in a manner appropriate
to his/her stage of consciousness. Waldorf
education attempts to do this. The childs stage
of consciousness depends primarily on his/her
biological age; (s)he cannot be hurried without
serious repercussions, in particular on health later
in middle age. This means that in every aspect
of homecare and education (stories, games, gym,
sport, handwork, puppet shows, out of school
activities, and so on), appropriateness to the
childs stage of consciousness must be borne in
mind.
According to Rudolf Steiner, the child
develops in three seven-year stages. Each stage is
a maturational one, culminating in a ripeness,
a readiness for the next stage which cannot be
accelerated without serious consequences. Respect
for these stages of natural development means,
for example, that reading and writing should not
be taught until the second stage. These stages are
now detailed, giving greater emphasis to the young
child because the younger the child, the greater
the influence of his education and upbringing.
The twelve senses are examined one by one, with
explanations of what is needed for their healthy
development in the child. The chronological
development of the senses is summarised at the
end of the chapter.
7
The First Stage: Birth to 7 years
After the birth of the physical body, it is the
turn of the etheric body1 to be developed and
then unsheathed or born after seven years. Each
seven-year stage is based on the preceding stage(s),
so this first stage is clearly the most important
and has the most far-reaching consequences.
Within this first stage, again, the beginning is the
foundation for the later parts.
The Needs of a Baby
Respect for a babys natural and unique
development is paramount. This means holding
back, waiting and observing to take cues from the
baby as to what his needs are. It means allowing
the baby to move freely, to act and explore his new
world as comes naturally to him and following
his own interest. This precludes interference,
distraction, propping the baby in a position he
could not manage alone, and standing him on
his feet before he can walk. In this manner the
various kinds of motor coordination which are
foundation skills for academic learning later will
then be learned naturally and not omitted.
Babies and young infants need a calm,
quiet, slow, and predictable life; one that would
seem boring to an adult is fine for them. Magda
Gerber2 gives a description of a respectful
method for raising babies in her book, based on
her work with Emmi Pikler. By that method the
habit of observing and reading the child can
be continued as the child grows. Self-esteem is
developed by mastery of challenges which entails
the caregivers holding back and allowing a small
child to solve his own problems as far as possible,
struggling, failing, getting frustrated and trying
again; if help is given at all, it should be the
smallest facilitating steps, just enough for the
infant to go on to figure out the solution.3
CHAPTER 1
The less consciously the child perceives, the
deeper do sense perceptions penetrate, even to
the subconscious, where they form a foundation
affecting moods, feelings and behaviour with
which (s)he will go through adult life. The spirit
in which the parent or caregiver does things
(for example, lovingly or carelessly, willingly or
begrudgingly, whole- or half-heartedly, gently
or harshly) makes a big difference, for it is the
message behind the spirit in which something
is done that is absorbed into the subconscious.
Thus, for the first year or so of life, it is the spirit
of morality (of the parent or caregiver) which has
the greatest influence on the child. After that, the
way language is spoken assumes an even greater
importance. If the mother tongue is spoken well
in all its richness, the child can form a close
relationship to the language in his/her very core
whence it will affect his/her personality and
spirituality.
The Development of the Etheric Body
In the first seven years of life, it is the etheric
body (for a description, see Appendix) that is
particularly developing, to become unsheathed
or fully born after seven years of life. A baby is
not born with internal organs that correspond
in miniature, in shape and relative position, to
those of an adult. It is primarily in the first seven
years that they are sculpted and brought towards
a proper and harmonious functioning by the
life forces of the etheric body. The child also
sculpts outwardly, first in sand and mud, later in
modelling beeswax; this plants a seed that can
ripen later into artistic originality.
In this period the body inherited from the
parents is gradually transformed into a more
individual one, a strengthening of the immune
system and a rebuilding into a more unique
individual, this process aided by the fevers of
childhood illnesses which burn down the old
enabling. As the teeth are the hardest element,
their transformation takes the longest; at around
age 6 the teeth, which look just like other
childrens, begin to fall out to be replaced with
a unique, permanent set.
8
Intellectual work during this first stage would
harden children and take forces away from their
task of developing a healthy body. The loss of
the milk teeth was the traditional signal that
the inner sculpting stage is finished, but today
children are losing their first teeth ever earlier, so
many other factors must be taken into account
to decide when this stage is completed. One sign
is the lengthening of the limbs so that the child
can reach over his head and touch the opposite
ear. Once this first stage is completed, the etheric
body is unsheathed and life forces are available for
memory and learning. The child is then ripe or
ready to enter first grade, usually in the seventh
year (that is after the sixth birthday, typically
about age six-and-a-half).
The All-Important Need for Rhythm
The etheric body gives us our sense of time
and is also termed the habit body. A consistent,
daily rhythm with meals, nap and bedtime at
the same time every day is a basic, fundamental
need. It develops an inner rhythm in the child
that brings health both then and throughout life.
Rhythm in classroom life and other daily, weekly,
monthly and annual rhythms is also important.
Children thrive on routine. Predictability brings
security and stability at all ages, besides making
children more accepting of discipline. Waldorf
teachers in the grades plan rhythm into every
lesson and every day so that school life is both
predictable and interesting. Over the years
these rhythms in classroom life give children
tremendous stability. Rhythm strengthens
among other things the rhythmical systems of
breathing and blood circulation. The only thing
that strengthens children for real life is this
strengthening of the rhythmical centre which
provides an inner strength so (s)he can fit in
anywhere; it seems to provide a strong, centred,
stable core so that a person can better withstand
the trials and tribulations of destiny.
Children need the rhythm of alternating
exercise and rest over the day, an alternation of
expansive, exerting activities (such as free play
indoors and out) and contracting, restful activities

(such as listening to a story). Singing games,
with their constant repetitions, and free play go
together like sleeping and waking. Rhythmic
repetitions strengthen the will. Physical security
comes from the body receiving nourishment and
rest at the same times every day. The rhythm
active in the realm of the soul is that of sleeping
and waking. On falling asleep our soul and spirit
leave the physical and etheric bodies in bed and
melt away, into and together with other beings;
then on waking we come to ourselves and carry
on with life as individuals, alone. This is a
breathing rhythm.
Healthy habits ingrained in the years from
birth to age 7 are the last to be lost and forgotten
by patients with Alzheimers disease. Similarly,
bad habits learned before age 7 enter deeply and
are the most difficult to unlearn.
Young childrens sense of time is much slower
than that of adults. They need to be given extra
time, for example, for getting ready to go out and
not be told to hurry up. This means that parents,
caregivers and teachers need to be patient and, in
particular, process-, not goal-, oriented.
The Young Child Needs Live,
Human Models
Imitation is the prime means of learning for
young children and is of tremendous importance
even until the age of 9. It is unconscious and, in
healthy children, automatic. Children drink in
the world and mirror it back, to the occasional
chagrin of their parents. First the parents and
caregiver, then the teachers are the childs
representatives of the human kingdom, his
models for imitation. Both their outer and inner
activity (in terms of inner development) affect
the child. Thus their whole manner and tone is
of critical importance. In kindergarten and the
early grades, teachers carry out household tasks
and the rhythmical gestures of craftsmen for
children to imitate, usually in songs and games.
It gives children a broader range of human role
models doing meaningful work, and it enables
an absorption of archetypal human activities
(such as growing, reaping, threshing and grinding
9
What Young Children Need for Healthy Development
grain and its transformation into bread), besides
unconsciously providing a historical perspective of
times with less technology.
For a young child an old person provides a
contrasting role model of what it is to be human.
Possibly young children have more in common
with the elderly, as in some ways old age can
be seen as a reiteration of early childhood. The
elderly too sorely need unchanging daily rhythms,
above all with meals and bedtime. Having less
control in the fingers, they need help to dress,
put on shoes, a necklace, etc. They have difficulty
opening packets, jars and cans. They may be
incontinent and wear diapers. They may walk
only slowly, unstable and holding onto something.
They may easily fall. They need to wear extra
clothes to conserve their life forces and even a
knee rug to anchor them to their chair. Their
concept of time can accord with that of the young
child. Just as a small baby lies for a long time
watching the play of light beams, so too the elderly
may spend hours day after day watching the sky
and the sunset. Whereas parents move quickly,
constantly busy, the elderly move only slowly when
they do move. They may spend long hours simply
sitting, a rock of stability to whom the child may
return at any time. Studying the head of an old
person, the child sees spots, bumps, wrinkles and
folds of skin, receding eyes with a twinkle and
perhaps silver hair like a benevolent witch. With
typically cold hands but a warm, loving heart, the
elderly can listen, play a game and, best of all, tell
stories (particularly of their own youth) that fire
the imagination. Siting a kindergarten near an old
peoples home can be mutually beneficial.
How the Young Child Thinks
An adult gains knowledge by the separated
elements of cognition, that is, by perception
and thinking. He feels separated from the world
around and at the same time, by perception
and thinking, establishes his connection with
it. The young child is a perceiving being only,
and his perceiving has a different quality than
that of an adult.4 As the thinking develops, it is
still not separated from perception, so cognition
CHAPTER 1
is a unified process. This means that the child
does not consider himself as separated from
the world around him but united with it, his
ego-consciousness not yet developed, and only
through his senses can he make sense of his
world. He is completely a perceiving being, a
sponge absorbing sense impressions that do not
stop at the sense organs but continue far into the
body. The child can hear in his fingertips and
taste in his toes. Often the earliest memories are
of sense impressions. Sense impressions affect his
whole being. If, for example, up to the fifth year
the child witnesses a raging adult, then this sense
impression will affect the etheric body in such a
way that the whole physical organism is damaged
with consequences for health later on.
The etheric body in addition is a general
organ of perception from which, between the fifth
and seventh years, develops imaginative thinking,
a picture-like thinking, an inner perception
endowed with fantasy in which thinking and
perception are still one.
Young Children Need Exposure to the
Four Elements and the Four Kingdoms
The four elements (earth, water, air and fire/
warmth) are active forces working in the world
and in us and can be said to be the essence of
which the world, both living and inanimate, is
composed. The four kingdoms (mineral, plant,
animal and human) inhabit the earth. Thus
the world can be seen as being fundamentally
composed of four elements and four kingdoms.
From birth to age 7, the child is preoccupied
with discovering these entities. When shown a
beautiful view, (s)he will likely focus on a stone or
plant right in front of him/her.
In kindergarten the kingdoms and the
elements pervade the nature stories and fairy
stories told to the children. The shelves housing
play materials may have rocks and stones on the
bottom, wood and other plant products on the
next shelf, stuffed animals higher still and finally
dolls on the top. Childrens play to an adult
can seem like an endless series of experiments
with those elements and those kingdoms,
10
discovering their characteristics and whether and
how they respond, the beginning of physics, of
caring for plants and animals and building the
foundation of social relationships; for the child
it is unselfconscious participation in all that is
around him/her; (s)he experiences things as if
they were alive and an extension of him/herself;
(s)he is in them. Thus the small child needs a
safe world with earth (s)he can dig into, sand,
water, trees, bushes, logs and rocks, a ditch, a
hillock, a place to garden and other children with
whom to play all in view of a caring, observant,
non-intrusive adult. A teacher needs an attitude
of reverence and love for all the kingdoms of
nature, ready to explore and experience the world
with knowledgeable yet awe-filled joy. The earth
is a living home for seeds, worms, beetles and
much more. It is exciting to closely watch an ant
carrying a seed home and to see the rainbow in a
dewdrop. Rain, wind and sun all fill children with
pleasure. It is astonishing how children flourish
when given plenty of time outdoors every day,
whatever the weather.
Children Need a God
A child needs to know that the world is
one and it is good and that there is a God who
created, loves and cares for all. Parents can create
a simple bedtime ritual with a candle and a prayer
or poem so that the child can enter sleep with
peace of mind, reassured of his/her being kept
safe. Young children have some inkling of the
spiritual world from which they have recently
come, and they need an acknowledgment of the
spiritual dimension.
The Child from 7 to 14 years
In this period it is the turn of the astral
body to develop before becoming unsheathed or
born at puberty. The three forces of the soul
are thinking, feeling and willing (i.e., volition/
resolve). Although they act in concert, the child
up to age 7 years old shows the developing will
predominating (in imitation and movement),
the child 714 years old shows the particular
development of feeling and the 14- to 21-year-olds

that of thinking. Whereas children birth to 7
years old learn almost exclusively by imitation,
the child 714 years old learns almost exclusively
through authority.
Decision-making is a higher-order activity,
in that it entails thinking at a more intellectual
level. For children aged 714 years, the authority
of the teacher and parents is stressed, and it is
they who should make the decisions. When a
childs life is rhythmical and predictable and he is
told what to do (provided considered judgments
are made by parents and teachers), the child is
fine and life continues smoothly. As soon as
a child is given choice, the astral body (for a
definition see Appendix) is called on to make
decisions. It is as if the child is momentarily at
the stage after puberty when the astral body has
become unsheathed. This is imposing too much
responsibility; it accelerates the childs maturity,
making him grow old too soon. It may explain
why migraines are now seen in children whereas
they used to happen only after the age of 21.
Negotiating before puberty is detrimental to
childrens health. Steiner said that giving children
choice before 14 years (puberty) is destructive
to their health. Children who receive authority
up to that age are able to guide themselves and
make decisions for the rest of their lives. The
reason parents now give children so much choice
is because they themselves have problems making
decisions. If parents do not give a child any choice
on just one day a week, they find the child falls
asleep more quickly that night. On the other days
there is too much astrality, and (s)he is too excited
to fall asleep quickly. Waldorf teachers may begin
to give children choice at about age 12.
Until the age of 7 the temperament a child
shows is a response to the parents temperaments.
In the child aged 714, it is clearly seen which
of the four temperaments are dominant (often
today it is a combination of two). The teacher
consciously works with this fact. (S)he may well
seat all the sanguine children in one cluster, all
the melancholics in another and so on; this way
they would each have a more extreme experience
of their own temperament and want to become
11
What Young Children Need for Healthy Development
more moderate. In telling a story the teacher will
make sure that the children of each temperament
are addressed by some part or another of the story
and have those individuals in mind as (s)he tells
that part.
The four elements and the four kingdoms
are dynamic categories, intellectually true yet
applicable to all ages. They weave in and out of
the Waldorf curriculum like musical themes.5
Characterising the phenomenal world in this way
enables the child to grasp the facts of the world
clearly and with reverence and love. In these
middle years, children are engaged in a great
deal of practical work related to these themes, for
example in arts and crafts, house-building, farm
visits and gardening.
In a child of age 7 the sense perceptions
are amazingly fresh and alive because the sense
processes are still mostly life processes. The deep
relationship between perceiving and thinking
continues until between the ninth and tenth
year when the child experiences a crisis in
development. A child at around 9 years old may
ask himself, Do I really belong to this mummy
and daddy or was I adopted? a sign that the
child has taken that step in consciousness of self
termed the nine-year change. Some call it the
Fall (from Paradise) because the child no longer
feels connected, a part of the wonderful world
around him, but rather feels apart; he suddenly
sees that the world is not so wonderful and
notices faults, foibles, dandruff and so on. At this
time perceiving and thinking separate, inner life
deserts the thinking as it becomes intellectual,
and the life-processes have by now mostly
withdrawn from the sense-organism with which
they were closely involved.6 Perceptions must
now be digested by thinking. The divine sense
of unity with the world begins to dissolve, to be
replaced by the first feelings of separateness and
the objective experience of the world out there.
The child no longer needs to learn by imitation
but by practising. The imitative forces become to a
certain extent transformed into a new relationship
with language, and so speech exercises are begun.
The first step in the incarnation (unsheathing)
CHAPTER 1
of the ego (for a definition see Appendix) was
when he first used the word I. This nine-year
change marks the second step. A third occurs at
puberty, and the final unsheathing of the ego or
I happens at around age 21.
The development of the soul force of feeling is
fostered by a great deal of artistic activity and by
the artistic way in which subjects are presented.
Teachers take in the subject material, in a way
pre-digest it, and then present it to the children
in a state appropriate for the childrens thinking
at that age. There are no textbooks in Waldorf
schools until grade 8; children write their own. In
grades 1 and 2 reading, writing and mathematics
are pervaded by the elements and kingdoms as
expressed in nature and fairy tales. The teacher
will draw pictures to show how a particular letter
came into being, in keeping with the pictorial
thinking the children still have.
In 3rd grade when the child begins to separate
him/herself from his surroundings, there is much
practical activity with the themes of farming and
house-building, situations which Adam and Eve
faced on leaving Paradise. In the 4th grade the
animal kingdom is studied, in 5th grade the plant
kingdom, and in 6th grade the mineral kingdom;
this is in keeping with childrens becoming more
and more down-to-earth. In 7th and 8th grades,
subjects that were first studied macroscopically
are now studied microscopically, for example,
in physiology. World geography provides the
macroscopic picture of the inter-relationships
of the four elements and kingdoms; the basic
interdependence of the natural world and human
beings is clearly seen.
During the middle school years there is
much artistic activity. The more music children
make, the less precipitous is puberty. Drama
presentations stimulate the feelings and enable
children to empathise with the joys and tragedies
of others.
The Child from 1421 years
The eruption of the permanent teeth (around
age 6) marked the first stage of hardening and
the unsheathing or birth of the etheric body.
12
Puberty (around age 13) marks the second stage
of hardening and the birth of the astral body.
Modern technology hardens children and causes
puberty to occur prematurely. Research in
Germany has shown that girls in Waldorf schools
reach puberty a year later than girls in other state
schools; the benefits of an extra year of an artistic,
imaginative education before the hardening stage
of puberty must be considerable. The child 1421
years learns by reason, thinking and conscious
acceptance of the knowledge of his teachers.
Although the soul forces of thinking, feeling
and willing act together, at this stage there is a
preponderance of thinking particularly about
the human world, an inner pondering. Young
people of this age need time to daydream.
The Twelve Senses
I will now proceed to examine the senses in
depth and particularly in relation to childrens
needs for healthy development. The school of
thought put forward is that of Rudolf Steiner,
in particular as developed and expounded by
Albert Soesman and Willi Aeppli. Although now
presented individually, a sense never works on
its own but always in concert with others. When
we touch the ground with our feet, for example,
we use our sense of balance at the same time.
If someone touches a hot dish, the temperature
sense and sight are involved as well as the sense of
touch. To use any of the senses we must want to
observe, hear, etc. There must be interest. It is the
province of the astral body this curiosity, interest
and urge to investigate something. In the case of
many senses, we usually take them for granted
and only notice them as a result of painful
experiences. The twelve senses are summarised in
the table that follows.
(1) The Sense of Touch
Touch gives only the awareness of the
boundary of ones own physical body. In the
pleasure of touch, we experience the desire to
make an intimate connection. Touch makes us
conscious of being separate and thereby also
separated from the divine world with which we
 What Young Children Need for Healthy Development

Table 1. The twelves senses summarised

Sense Sense-impression Direction Group

Touch boundary of own body inward, physical,

Life sense
Self movement

own well-being/discomfort/pain
own movement, outer forms,
outer movement
} to own
physical
body
} will,
lower senses

Balance relationships to gravity

} }
Smell odour outward soul,
Taste taste/flavour to the feeling,
Sight colour world middle senses
Temperature warmth

Hearing sound/tones inward, revealing spiritual,

Language
Concept
Ego
words/speech
idea/concept
ego of another
} latent element
the specifically
human world
} social,
thinking,
upper senses

were once united. An inner longing to be reunited
with the divine means we need to express all
intimacy through the sense of touch7 and have a
deep longing to touch things to reach their spirit
and paradise again. Touching something beautiful
can make us gasp with awe, as if we would like to
inhale the beauty and hold it there.
At birth a baby does not know where his/her
body ends and outer objects and people begin.
Consequently (s)he has no self-consciousness,
no boundaries, but is united with everyone and
everything around, even with the entire cosmos,
like a drop of water in the sea. The sense of touch
is so very undeveloped that (s)he is not yet ticklish.
With the development of the sense of touch comes
the experience of the bodys boundaries and the
gradual withdrawal from the cosmos.
Love and touch go hand in hand. Young
children need love above all to live and to thrive.
Without it they will sicken and die. They need
to be cherished and caressed by parents and
caregivers so they can be helped to leave paradise
without losing the desire to return.8 Bouncing,
dandling and tickling games all show the child
(s)he is loved and at the same time develop the
sense of touch. They help to develop the sense of
a boundary before the time when the childs arms
are long enough for him to touch himself all over,
about the age of 2 or 3; it is at this stage that
(s)he takes the big step in self-consciousness of
using the word, I. (However, some consider
tickling an infant invasive, with the tickler in a
position of power and the child forced to laugh,
whereas laughter should come from the soul and
be a sign of happiness, contentment and joy.9)
Caregivers can warm and enliven childrens hands
and feet with massage, foot-clapping and finger
and toe games.
To develop and keep healthy the sense of
touch, what a child touches is of paramount
importance. The sense of touch is of tremendous
importance for babies. There is a great difference
between touching the breast and nipple when
feeding or a plastic bottle with rubber nipple.
Some bottle-feeding mothers expose the breast
to the babys cheek when they feed to try to
compensate. It takes much more effort to suck
from the mothers nipple, and that effort develops
will. It makes a difference as a baby crawls
whether his fingers touch materials natural and
warm (such as wool, sheepskin and wood) or
synthetic in carpeting and flooring. Everything

13
CHAPTER 1
a child touches has at that moment a deep truth
for him.10 The sense of touch is most acute in the
fingers; the density of nerve endings is enormous
there. The brain discovers what the fingers
explore.11 It makes a great difference if a childs
clothes are made of natural rather than synthetic
fibres, handmade and, better still, homemade
with love and warmth knitted into them, likewise
if his toys are made of wood rather than plastic.
Synthetic materials, particularly plastic, dull
the sense of touch but materials that were once
alive (such as wool, cotton, silk and wood) are
enlivening and life-enhancing. Additionally the
colours of natural materials are more satisfying to
the eye and nourish the sense of sight.
When an adult is ill, he may become so
sensitive as to have an inkling of how the young
child feels. Take clothing as an example. When an
adult is feverish, he may not bear to have synthetic
fabrics next to his skin a difference he is
unaware of when well. The young child is sensitive
all the time and needs to have natural fabrics
touching his skin. There are many reasons for
this. One is that they enhance the sense of touch.
Another is that what was once alive still has some
life forces and is life-enhancing. A third reason
is that all matter emits subtle energy vibrations;
vibrational medicine finds that of all the synthetic
fabrics, nylon is much worse for the health in this
regard than, say, acrylic or polyester.12
(2) The Life Sense
Scientists term the proprioceptive sense,
the sense by which the sympathetic and para-
sympathetic nerves help in observing the life
processes. Steiner calls it the life sense. With it
we experience our own constitution and so how
well or not we feel. It tells us when we are hungry,
thirsty, tired or in pain. Pain gives us a warning
that something is not right. Pain is meaningful,
often as if its saying, Change or be worse!
Behind every pain is a message and that usually
concerns learning restraint.
Pain teaches us to avoid danger, falling,
getting hurt and so on and thus gives us an
orientation in everyday life.13 From pain the
14
toddler learns to avoid bumping into things.
From painful experiences in life we can learn and
develop inwardly considerably. Pain and suffering
cause a contraction and concentration, a turning
inward and a deepening of the soul; this inward
growth comes to fruition in wisdom. With pain
comes the impulse that produces compassion and
conscience14 and on the latter, the future of
humanity and of the world depends.
All learning is painful; without pain we would
learn nothing at all.15 Many modern parents try
to avoid their childrens experiencing pain. For
example, if a child wants food or a treat or a
question answered, then that is given immediately
and the pain of waiting avoided. An infant may
be picked up every time (s)he cries. Even fairy
tales may be edited to remove the frightening
and gory parts in order to spare the child pain or
anxiety. Children are weakened by always getting
what they want immediately and so are later
intimidated by the least challenge.16 Waiting gives
practise in restraint; a prayer or blessing before
meals provides a few moments, and having no
snacks between meals can give regular practise.17
Instead of suffering and addressing pain and
sorrow, there is a modern trend to avoid pain
at all costs. Not only does this cause a lack of
conscience, but pain in ones destiny must take
a different, sinister route.18 Readily available
narcotics offer the temptation of instant freedom
from the pain of destiny. People who can put up
with everyday pain, can also accept the pain of
destiny.19
The young child experiences the feeling of
well-being through the sense of life, particularly
in free play. The process of play helps children
digest their sense experiences. Play is part
experimentation with self and the world and part
imitation of the adult world, of whatever (s)he
sees adults doing. Given versatile play materials
from any one of which all manner of things
can be created their play can blossom to full
competence. The key words of the period from
3 to 6 years are initiative and industry; it is
when play reaches a peak. One sees masterpieces
of imagination! The central element is imitation

of action and speech, the children taking the role
of real adults and trying to reproduce the adult
world,20 making sense of it in the process. One
can assess how well a child is developing by the
quality and richness of his play. Dramatic play
can be technically defined as involving role-play
by imitation, make-believe with objects, actions
and situations and shows persistence of role
play for 515 minutes or more. Sociodramatic
play includes these elements and besides has
interaction and verbal communication with other
child(ren) involved.21 High-quality play would be
socio-dramatic, showing fantasy and imagination
such that the initial theme is developed for 3045
minutes or more.
A childs play reflects the development of
his/her imagination. The first stage of this
development lasts from about age 2 until about
age 4 or 5. Until about age 2 the childs
will is very much connected with the parents/
caregivers activities, imitating everything (s)he
does. From about age 2 the will becomes more
and more connected with the childs imagination.
Fantasy and imagination appear together, for
when a memory picture is joined to an object,
fantasy results. (S)he sees reality through his/her
imagination, thereby creating unending fantasies.
For this new kind of play, children no longer need
realistic objects (for example, a sweeping brush)
but instead need simple, versatile objects which
the childs fantasy can transform into whatever
the situation requires (for example, a rope can
be a horses reins, a princes golden belt and a
telephone cord at different times). Around age 4
or 5, fantasy play suddenly loses its appeal and a
new kind of play appears. Instead of the childs
seeing an object and thinking of a game (fantasy
stimulated from the outside), the child thinks
of a game, decides what (s)he will need and then
goes in search of the objects. Thus after age 5 the
will forces have to make an extra, inner effort as
the will joins with both mental image and well-
developed fantasy to create new objects which
appear in his/her mental image without an outer
stimulus.22
15
What Young Children Need for Healthy Development
Building is a characteristic of the play of
young children; it can be seen as a reflection of
what the child is doing inwardly, building his
own physical body. By the age of 4 a child is
able to build a house (for example, with chairs,
a big sheet and pegs or ties) and play in it with
a plan. By 5 years the child no longer needs
props around him/her to provoke a plan but can
arrive in kindergarten with the plan inside him/
herself. In play children exercise and develop the
will in an unconscious way. Toys mould a childs
relationship to play. The simpler the toy, the more
it challenges the child to develop by stimulating
his imagination. A rag doll with minimal facial
features is an example. A finished toy impedes the
imagination. A finished doll with a fixed smile,
for example, is hard to imagine feeling any other
way than happy. Moreover, finished toys give the
child the expectation of being entertained.
(3) The Self-movement Sense
Scientists term this the kinesthetic sense or
muscle sense. It is the sense with which we notice
our own motion. We know when we are moving
our hand voluntarily without having to check.
With this sense we experience movement and
the potential for movement in our own body,
and observe as movements our own expressions
and emotions.23 When someone runs his hand
over a wooden bowl, becoming aware of its shape
and how rough or smooth it is, the sense of self-
movement is engaged as well as the sense of touch.
Looking at a circle, the eye follows it round and
the sense of self-movement is engaged.
According to Steiner this ability to move is
conferred by the astral body, that is, our source of
energy. (Plants do not have an astral body and so
cannot move.) To try to explain a movement, the
intention behind it must be included, that is, the
plan in the mind of the person moving. The plan
comes first and the movement follows. Each little
plan is part of the whole life plan or karma, a task
we have each set ourselves. This biographic life
plan lies deep in the subconscious, in the depths
of the soul, and is deeply connected with all our
movements.
CHAPTER 1
All developments in the childs movement are
development of the childs will, that soul faculty
which involves action (or inaction sometimes)/
resolve/volition and which corresponds to the
bodily realm of the limbs and metabolic system,
including digestion. Steiner maintains that in our
will we are asleep for example, we are completely
unconscious of what goes on in our muscles when
we move. Those great steps in learning to walk,
to talk and to think are made unconsciously
with the help of super-sensible beings. The creator
beings not only provide us with our physical
and psychological makeup, but also our forward-
striving will and our dynamic impulse to play,
practise, develop and grow. According to Steiner,
the will comprises the whole realm of what
Freud terms the unconscious and much beyond,
including the digestive system, limb mobility
and our intentions. (Steiner contends that there
is no unconscious, as the whole universe is
permeated by consciousness and when a person
is unconscious higher consciousnesses flood into
him.)
It is important that, as far as possible, the
movements of a baby or infant be self-directed
and not prescribed by an adult, bar selective
intervention to prevent a child being hit or hurt.
It is essential for a child to discover as much
as possible for himself, and thereby discover
joy. Piaget said, Every time we teach a child
something, we keep him from inventing it
himself. Allowed the freedom to experience his
environment in his own individual way, the child
gains improved coordination, competence and
a sense of peace, playing at child-time not adult
clock time, with no need for encouragement or
external reward such as praise. Uninterrupted
play promotes concentration and a long attention
span.
A childs play is his work and is a serious
matter demanding respect. In play he works
out his conflicts and current challenges and
persists till he achieves the next step in mastery
for which he is ready. Interruptions by adults are
distractions, causing the child to focus on the
adult instead. In Waldorf kindergartens more time
16
is given to free play than to any other activity.
Attentive observation of a child(ren) playing freely
affords the watcher an excellent opportunity
to know and understand the child(ren) better.
Observation is the father of thinking.
With the freedom to move naturally by
being left flat on her back on the bed or floor for
much of her waking time a babys movements
will develop properly out of her own volition. On
her back, she has complete postural support so is
able to raise the hands in the air above the face,
as if playing with the light beams, the beginning
of eye-hand coordination. When the hands meet
at the vertical midline, the left side meets the
right side and so begins bilateral integration.
Eventual manual dexterity could depend on this
simple, early activity. (Being propped up, however,
inhibits most movements of the body, and
articulating the hands in front of the face would
be impossible. That inhibition of movement also
precludes development of vision even though the
eyes are forward.)24
A babys movements cause pathways to
develop in the growing brain and develop the
responses of the central nervous system. The
automatic grasping reflex of the newborn is in
response to something touching the palm of the
hand; this reflex needs to be gradually lost so that
later there will be no instinctive avoidance of the
palms touching, say, dough, clay or even a pencil
which would result in a peculiar grasp.
Left to move freely, a baby learns to turn over
onto his/her stomach, to raise his/her head and
look round, to turn back again, to push him/
herself into a sitting position and, once (s)he has
trunk stability, can reach for something without
falling over. (S)he learns to slide along the floor
pushing with his/her big toes and/or lizard-like,
using hands and legs. (S)he may shuffle along on
his/her bottom. Next (s)he will crawl on open
hands and knees. While crawling, the palms are
being touched but the weight prevents closure in a
grasp and the grasping reflex naturally disappears.
The ability to stretch, grasp and release develops
in stages until soon after a year old (s)he can pick
up something small using only the tips of his/her

thumb and index finger, and without the other
hand also closing.
At first, hand movements are intimately
connected with head movements. For fine motor
activity of the hand, such as writing with a relaxed
grip, the head and trunk have to act as a centred,
relaxed and stable foundation. For the head and
trunk to be so requires maturation of the early
movement patterns.25 Left to move freely, to crawl
on hands and knees, to stand, walk and eventually
run, the gross motor development provides the
postural basis for fine, fluid, relaxed movements
of the hand. Furthermore the childs exploration
of three-dimensional space (by horizontal
movement in contact with the floor, by crawling
on hands and knees and by walking) develops an
inner connection with space later used not only
for physical exercise but also to orient him/herself
to the page for reading, writing and number work.
This is archetypal movement development.
Unaided by others, the infant struggles until
(s)he becomes gradually ready to try to master the
next ability. This way (s)he fully masters each step
at his/her own pace so that later (s)he has steadier
balance and a more controlled postural system.
Developing the body by his/her own effort and
without interference, the ego is able to leave a
deeper imprint.
The development of the feet is intimately
connected with that of the hands. The more
dextrous and flexible are both hands and feet,
the better the cognitive centre in the brain
develops and thus the stronger the childs ability
to learn.26 Foot-clapping games are delightful and
help to connect the infant with his/her feet. Foot
exercises can be fun. Marbles, a handkerchief,
socks or daisies can be picked up with the toes
and put in a basket. Children can walk like fairies
on tiptoe, then on the heels, on the outside of
the soles like gnomes and then on the inside of
the soles. Children with handwriting problems
can learn to write with their feet, and their
handwriting will be automatically improved. Foot
exercises often result in laughter which is healthy
(laughter causes the astral body to leave temporarily,
giving more room for the etheric body).
17
What Young Children Need for Healthy Development
The young child relishes movement.
Unrestrained (s)he moves almost continuously.
The will impels him/her to explore this new
physical world, to touch and make move whatever
catches his/her eye, to move as if constantly
testing the limits of his/her body and of his/
her physiological makeup, ever trying to extend
his/her abilities. The movements of the toddler
are expressions of energy and drive (part of
the unconscious will); then in the third year
it becomes obvious that movements are more
intentional.
Children run, tumble, climb and crawl. They
practise over and over again movements they have
learned, doing better each time. A child exercises
muscles, persistence and imagination when
(s)he keeps banging one stone against another
until finally one breaks into two and (s)he can
find who is inside. Children need opportunities to
develop both the gross and fine motor movements
that are intelligence-forming, the basis for creative
thinking when older. Children need unpaved
space outdoors to run, climb, crawl and roll, to
walk on mud and in sand, to build with sand
or branches and to balance on logs and planks.
All these activities are physiologically necessary
involving stretching, articulation, balance and
much more in a meaningful context.
Jobs outdoors are good and help others also,
for example, digging, raking leaves and shovelling.
Examples of indoor activities involving both large-
and fine-muscle movement are: kneading dough,
grinding grain, cleaning windows and shoes,
scrubbing and polishing tables and chairs, cutting
vegetables and washing napkins. These have both
social and moral components in that work is
love in action.27 Tying shoelaces and buttoning
up clothes involve fine motor movements and a
feeling of increasing self-esteem. The same can be
said for stitching a simple gnome, finger-knitting
a belt for a sword or making a jumprope with
double-finger crochet.
There is a pressing need to influence
the unconscious forces of the childs will.
Traditionally, physical punishment and moralising
were used to keep children still and quiet with
CHAPTER 1
the result that children were intimidated and may
have grown into adults who felt insignificant.
Today most try to argue and reason with a child
almost worthless, as his consciousness is growing
only slowly and is incapable of dealing with that
approach; so bewilderment and confusion are
produced, and in adolescence moral insecurity
can result. Today modern technology (such
as television, computer games and electronic
games) is widely used to keep children still
and quiet as an unpaid babysitter. However,
these easily destroy imagination and creativity,
besides inducing lethargy and giving children
the idea that life is about being entertained. An
alternative, as practised in Waldorf schools, is to
plan for the childs will in activities that take place
in the childs surroundings so that (s)he can use
his/her drives and impulses in imitation of useful
and challenging activities over the day. This helps
the child to humanise his/her movements and to
individualise them. Waldorf teachers cut down
greatly on telling children what to do, particularly
before age 7. Healthy children, and in particular
those who do not watch television, have a strong
impulse to imitate. Waldorf teachers try to have
only harmonious and meaningful movements,
their gestures and bearing worthy of imitation and
thus to positively affect many aspects of the childs
growth and development.
When a young childs fingers gain dexterity,
his thinking after puberty will be enhanced. It is
expressed in the old saying, Nimble fingers make
nimble thoughts. Neurological literature well
documents that gross and fine motor development
are the foundations of learning readiness.
The neurological system cannot organise for
cognitive learning until the development of
the bodys physical systems is completed. This
depends on, among other factors, the childs
having been given since babyhood the freedom
to move on his own initiative and not placed in
positions which he could not get into and out
of by himself. This precludes infant seats that
prop the baby up, baby positioners, bouncers,
swings, walkers and other contraptions, all of
which confine the infant, inhibit his/her natural
18
development and coordination and cause tensions
in compensation. All movements are important
for neurological development. A spiral movement
is involved during traditional domestic work and
cooking (such as shaking flour round a baking
tin or wringing out a sheet). The spiral is the
fundamental movement of the astral body with
its soul powers of thinking, feeling and willing.
Ideally children make this spiral movement in
kindergarten in imitation of their teacher and
thus also nurture the forces of intelligence.28
Having been given adequate opportunity to
develop gross and fine motor skills, a child in his/
her seventh year (around age 6) reaches that
ripeness when (s)he is ready to enter school and
begin cognitive learning. The growth forces then
loosen and, in part, become intellectual forces.
It is a step in the birth of the intellect. After that
step, all movement that takes children off the
ground helps skipping, hopping, jumping and
climbing, for example. Skipping is a wonderful
exercise for coordination and a favourite
playground activity of children ages 69.
Knitting taught in first grade, before
reading and writing, improves bilateral motor
coordination and communication of messages
to both sides of the brain, besides eye-hand
coordination, visual tracking and visual
attending. Knitting also uses perceptual skills that
encompass both spatial relationships and figure
ground recognition. Without the perceptual
foundation, reading and writing are difficult to
acquire, if they can be acquired at all. In addition,
the training in concentration which knitting
provides considerably helps persistence and
problem-solving later.
(4) The Sense of Balance
Whereas the first three senses concern the
inside of the body, the sense of balance concerns
the world outside we keep our balance relative
to a gravitational field. The organ that monitors
balance consists of three semicircular canals at the
base of the skull; the canals are at right angles to
each other and so represent the three dimensions
or planes. They give us a position in space and

from them we know what is left, right, front,
back, up and down, both internally and externally
in the environment. Only a human being is in
a straight, vertical line from which (s)he can
determine a standpoint and also a spatial sense, a
sense of common space, of community.
Looking at a fully upright person with arms
at his sides, we can see that the joints of ankle,
knee, wrist, hip,
elbow, shoulder and
organ of balance
jaw are in a straight jaws joint
line together with the
organ of balance. Our shoulder joint
uprightness, in balance,
is an expression of elbow joint
our I. No animal
has the feeling I hip joint
exist; only man has wrist joint
I-consciousness. We
experience ourselves knee joint
most intensively when
we stand up straight, ankle joint
and most activities
are best done in a standing position. The child
does not stand upright and walk as a biological
necessity; he needs a trigger. That trigger is the
other humans he sees walking, his models for
imitation. When a crawling baby, unaided, first
manages to stand, there is a sense of triumph, as if
(s)he has become truly human.
Babies need time to gradually bring
themselves into a relationship with gravity and
to develop the muscular coordination to orient
themselves freely in space. A toddler will spend
much time mastering steps and stairs and will try
climbing into boxes. Other children will seize the
opportunity to climb and balance on whatever is
available furniture, stairs, logs, poles, pipes and
so on. They are as if driven to practise improving
their balance. Children allowed freedom to
move outdoors and to develop physically without
restraint have been found to have less fractures
and concussions than wealthy children who were
kept indoors and brought up by a nanny;29 clearly
their gross motor development was better with
better balance and coordination.
19
What Young Children Need for Healthy Development
If logs are set vertically in soft ground in
the playground, a child will not attempt them
until (s)he is nearly ready to master walking on
them without overbalancing. That stage is about
age 56 and is one of many signs suggesting
readiness for 1st grade.
(5) The Sense of Smell
The nose has a remarkable form of mucous
membrane with nerve cells that pass through the
bone directly into the brain. This accounts for the
immediate effect of an odour. There is no choice
with the sense of smell an odour enters unasked
and is pervasive, reaching every part. Generally
speaking, children feel intensely the pleasure or
disgust coming to them through the senses of
smell and taste.30 A baby or toddler encountering
a strange smell such as blue cheese may feel it as a
disaster, down to his/her toes.
For human beings the sense of smell is the last
remnant of instinct. As it is mainly unconscious,
it is difficult to describe an odour except as
good or bad. Smell enables us to judge
between good and evil, whether hygienically or
morally. Smell forces us to make a judgment and
at a deep psychological level.31
(6) The Sense of Taste
By tasting we should be able to tell if what we
are taking in is wholesome or not and whether it
is exactly what our body needs at that moment.
Taste is the sense that is the most misused and
degenerate. Sweet foods in babyhood start the
decline. Sugar causes among other things the
teeth to rot from the outside via bacterial plaque;
it leaches valuable minerals, produces toxic
metabolites and ages the body.32 A young child if
given no sugar whatsoever until at least the age
of three is unlikely to ever have a great liking for
CHAPTER 1
sweet foods. A sweet taste gives a general sense of
well-being; it satisfies our immediate desire for
egoistic well-being.33 It is typically women rather
than men who crave sugar and chocolate, perhaps
from their lower, on average, self-esteem. Possibly
babies treated with respect and given freedom to
move and play outdoors become self-confident
and have less need for sweet tastes. Furthermore,
with minimal salt and no sugar in their food,
children are better able to develop an ability to
notice subtle differences in taste.
A sour taste is refreshing and activating;
it awakens something in us. Salt is strongly
awakening and connected with thinking.
Thinking explains something outside itself and
the thinking per se is forgotten; just so does
salt enhance other tastes and flavours without
drawing attention to itself. A bitter taste provides
resistance for the will, for the will must be
engaged to cope with bitterness. Children need
bitter foods occasionally to become vigorous. To
a young child rejecting a bitter food can be said,
You will like it when you are older.
The whole atmosphere where we eat is
important, and it is healthier, when possible,
not to eat alone. The plates, details, ambience,
gesture of serving and the blessing can all show a
reverence for the sacred matter at hand. Children
need to imitate and enjoy helping, for example,
by chopping vegetables for soup, making bread,
mixing ingredients for cakes and setting the
table. Without the effort (will) to chew slowly
and thoroughly, less benefit is derived. Adequate
chewing enlarges the jaws so that braces are not
needed later. To develop the will, raw foods such
as crudites (sticks of celery, carrot, etc.) are better
than spooned foods such as porridge. Children
find vegetables, and in particular raw vegetables,
the least attractive food. In a group situation such
as occurs in the kindergarten, children eat foods
that they would not eat at home; as their eating of
them then becomes a habit they usually grow to
like them.
Young children often prefer to eat, for
example, their fish, peas and French fries
separately in order to have a clear taste experience.
This phenomenon can be considered in relation
20
to the other senses also. Each sense-impression
(colour, taste and so on) is a tone in a range of
experience. All are new to the young child. Thus,
for example, in kindergarten the teacher may offer
only one colour for painting to give children a
clear experience of that colour, perhaps for weeks
or months on end, and they are content.
A toddler can be given a small chair at a low
table for meals so that (s)he can choose to sit and
eat or not. Simple rules (such as: if he tips it out
he loses it; if he leaves the table, it is the end of
the meal) should be consistently kept, the child
never forced to eat and no food offered when he is
no longer eager. The goal is for the child to be in
control and know when he is hungry and when he
is full. Overfeeding destroys the feeling of satiation.
The verb to digest is used not only for food
but also regarding food for thought an idea, a
book or a lecture. Thus we do not distinguish
between earthly and spiritual nourishment.
Taking in food for thought (substance from
the macrocosm) nourishes us in a way like
a fertilisation or fructification. In turn we
fructify the world with our culture by taking
the products of nature and raising them to a
higher level, for example in building, decorating,
dressing and cooking and in arts and crafts.
The expression, in good taste is used for these
activities in which culture is formed with an
outward taste.
(7) Sense of Sight
Most sense organs are created in embryo
from the outside inwards by a small area of skin
becoming specifically sensitive and subsequently
connected with the brain.34 The eye is the
opposite. The eyes are actually extensions of the
brain, having been created in embryo from two
brain protrusions. This may explain why they are
particularly associated with thinking and can be
tricked, for example, by an optical illusion when
what the thinking expects to see is added. It is
the only sense that can be fooled. All the other
sense abilities are connected with the eye. When
we look at a triangle, for example, we use the
sense of movement as we walk it with our eyes.

It is more difficult to keep ones balance with the
eyes closed because two of the six eye muscles are
connected to the organ of balance. When we look
at something, it is the organ of balance which
tells us if that something is level or not. The life
sense can judge whether what we see with our eyes
is pleasant or not. The sense of taste describes
something we see as sweet, attractive or dirty.
Thus the eye is considered the all-encompassing
sense.
It is said that the eye is the window of the
soul. We cannot meet more directly than eye-
to-eye. Mothers are recommended not to wear
sunglasses so that their young children can
see their eyes. Our eyes show our feelings, our
happiness and our tearfulness.
Children exercise the eyes when they move
them rather than stare and when they change
their focus. In the early grades Waldorf teachers
support the development of peripheral vision (as
opposed to focussed vision) with many diverse
classroom activities, with less importance assigned
to focussed, abstract work such as reading and
writing, and by time spent daily out of doors.
Children in Waldorf schools are therefore less
likely to need spectacles.
In regards to looking at colour, with black,
white and grey one is really only looking at the
outside surface of things; the inner being of such
things is hidden. With only black, white and grey,
it is very difficult to express a mood. That they
are currently in fashion is perhaps no surprise
given that todays pervasive media and advertising
convey a vogue for superficiality. When colour is
revealed we experience that the inner essence of
nature appears.35 With colours we experience an
emotion, an involvement, a change of mood. The
colour of prison life and mood is grey but when
the hostage in Lebanon, McCartney, found an
orange in his cell, it was as if he had been given a
sun in miniature; he knew he would never eat it;
it nourished his soul and lifted his spirit for a long
time.
Goethes colour theory explains that colour
arises from the interaction between light and
darkness. There are two possibilities either light
overcomes darkness and the active colours (red,
21
What Young Children Need for Healthy Development
orange and yellow hues) arise or darkness prevails,
creating blue and violet. For example, as the sun
sets, the colourless, invisible light in the distance
overcomes the gradually darkening foreground,
so first yellow, then orange, then red are created.
When we look up at the sky, we look through
light to the darkness of outer space and see blue.
Colours can be arranged in order in a self-
contained circle so that, for example, from red
one can pass through all the other colours and
reach red again. With no other sense impression
(tone, odour and so on) is that possible. If one
looks at a colour for some minutes and then closes
the eyes, one sees the complementary colour
(that is, the colour opposite it on the colour
circle). Until the age of nine a child responds
physiologically to the complementary colour of
the colour (s)he him/herself is wearing. This
phenomenon of reversal at the physiological
level means that, for example, an overactive,
boisterous 6-year-old could be dressed in red so
that he would respond to the complementary
colour, green, and be calmed. An example of this
reversal occurred once when a boy imitating a
dragon was running round the kindergarten and
another child dropped a red cloth on him; the
boy stopped still for several minutes, then pulled
off the red cloth and, crestfallen, said, That
cloth took all my fire! One can speculate on the
physiological response to some modern clothing
colours such as fluorescent yellow that are
garish, attracting the eye and holding it. Whilst
useful to protect roadworkers from accidents, they
are inappropriate for young children. Colours
that also appear in nature are pleasant and restful
to see. Only white and pastel colours are really
appropriate to dress babies fresh from the spiritual
world, hardly having arrived in this world of
matter.
Waldorf teachers dress appropriately for the
age of the children they teach. In kindergarten
teachers wear solid colours, loose and somewhat
formless clothes, to some extent like a mother
earth figure. This way they can almost melt into
the background and least disturb the child in his
world. The dress colour is not black or grey and
probably not white, but likely a retiring shade
CHAPTER 1
of colour. Some teachers wear a different colour
each day of the week according to the respective
planets. Such an alternation would suit those
children who are particularly affected by colour.
Mineral-based colours in wall paint give
a solid, uniform colour, causing the eye to
encounter a barrier, and that relatively near. The
walls of a Waldorf classroom instead are typically
painted in a manner termed lazure (zure as
in pleasure). After initially being painted white,
a coat of colour is put on with a special brush (or
a sponge), applied with a lemniscate movement
so that not all the white is covered and the effect
gives a certain depth of vision and a feeling of
movement; the eye does not come to a stop.
The colour is specific to the age of the children
(and geographical location is borne in mind) for
example, in the nursery pink, in the kindergarten
red-orange.
Other items in the classroom that children see
are made of natural materials wool, cotton, silk
and wood and natural colours (from plant dyes)
which mix well, without clashing, and are restful
and pleasing to the eye. In the kindergarten the
nature table is an attractive focus. Some would
make it perfect, even cute. Most contend
that cuteness is only for adults and that what
is important is the love, care and effort of the
teacher (in making the characters, collecting the
materials from nature and assembling the scene)
that affects and nourishes the children.
(8) The Warmth or Temperature Sense
When we touch something of the same
temperature as ourselves, we sense it with our
sense of touch only. To experience it with our
temperature sense, there must be a flow of heat.
For example, when we hold something cold, we
experience it as being cold because heat flows
from us to the object until the object reaches our
own temperature. Likewise if we hold a hot object,
we feel it to be hot, whilst the flow of heat is
reversed.
A long time ago some animals possessed a
so-called third eye; in fact it was not an eye but
an organ of warmth. In humans it has evolved
22
to become the pineal gland, which begins in the
embryo just under the fontanelle. It is significant
that everything we absorb with our twelve senses
is gathered up in the pineal gland.36
Ordinary nerves under the skin detect when
warmth from the skin flows to or from the
capillaries. These unspecialised nerves could
be called interest nerves. The essence of any
nerve is that it radiates interest, to see what comes
back.37 Our soul shows interest in the world
with this sense. By our interest in others and the
world, it is as if we are putting out feelers, looking
out for warmth; if warmth comes back, we feel
involved, stimulated and enthusiastic; if we get
nothing back, we experience cold, contraction and
exclusion. Thus the temperature sense operates
both on the physical and soul levels.
Young children are less aware than adults of
whether they feel hot or cold or are physically
comfortable. As the childs etheric body is not
unsheathed until the seventh year, its protection
is particularly important for both the childs
immediate and later health. Such children need
adequate, weather-appropriate clothing to keep
warm and dry at all times; their wearing one or
two layers more than the adults around can be a
guide. For handicapped children this applies
even more.
Waldorf kindergarten teachers particularly
try to bring warmth to the children and in all
manner of ways. It is in the eurythmy B gesture
that underlies all the kindergarten teachers work
and is exemplified by Raphaels Sistine Madonna,
a symbol of the ideal parent, caring, supporting
and nurturing with unconditional love. Warmth
is in the wooden or carpeted floor rather than
tiles, stone or marble. It is in the natural fabrics of
the play materials and curtains. Chairs and tables
are wooden and sometimes also the panelling on
the walls. The children feel warmth literally in
the hot mid-morning snack and the enforcement
of weather-appropriate clothing. Warmth is in the
teachers words and tone of voice and the love she
has for all the children. (The teachers love, among
other things, counteracts the effects of being yelled
at at home and hearing an unloving tone there.)

(9) The Sense of Hearing
Although sight makes us aware of the surface
of things, with hearing we can reach the reality,
the inner nature of something. Thus we can tell
crystal from glass, silver from other metals and so
on. It is with the cochlea of the inner ear that we
hear. The cochlea and the organ of balance (the
three semicircular canals) have the same origin
in embryo because they are polar opposites. The
organ of balance connects us with the earth so
that we are oriented in earthly space, and with our
hearing we enter the spiritual realm, the cosmos.
When listening to music we eliminate our external,
physical balance in order to exercise our inner
balance as the music moves between high and
low, slow and fast. Just as there are three outer
dimensions in balance (height, width and depth),
so are there three inner dimensions music in
balance having the right pitch, the right tone length
and the right volume.38 The organ of hearing is
the transformed organ of balance, so improved
development of the sense of balance in the child
will be reflected in an improved sense of hearing.
How the young child experiences music was
researched by Helmut Moog with a thousand
preschool children beginning in 1968. He found
that from age 3 onwards concentrated listening
is part of the childs experience. He found that
young children reacted to words more strongly
than to songs, music or noise. He found that
children experience music and speech together.
They experience rhythmic speech like music
for example, a nursery rhyme would be heard as
music, and they have no need to find meaning
in it. Perhaps we should expect children to
experience speech as music if we consider the
theory that in very ancient times of mans earthly
evolution, his sound and tone expressions were
not differentiated into song and speech; instead
they were one and man lived less in the nervous
system; he dwelt more in the breathing system,
and for this reason primeval speech was more
like song.39 We can tell that spoken nursery
rhymes are still experienced by 5- and 6-year-olds
as music because they will say to their teacher,
sing that again. Moog found that most childrens
23
What Young Children Need for Healthy Development
development showed the clear order of first speech
(of rhythmic songs and poems), then rhythm (very
simple 1212), and lastly by 4 years of age tone
height (a simple, inaccurate going up and down
with the melody or simple humming).40
Steiner said, [T]he child easily understands
the element of melody, but (s)he begins to
understand the element of harmony only when
(s)he reaches the age of 9 or 10.41 This is what
Moog found, that young children were unable to
hear harmonies but, instead, hear and experience a
total sound. A big body of sounds is not something
they can imitate, and when the child cannot
imitate, something is blocked within him, as if he
cannot digest it; so even if an adult plays a beautiful
harmony, it is blocked off within the child.
Julius Knierim investigated deeply over his
lifetime the relation between the child and music,
working with handicapped children who present
so clearly the needs which all children have.
He said, Before their ninth year, children will
generally sing on their own at a much higher pitch
than the sounds they hear in their environment,
and also faster than what would correspond to
the rhythmic sense of an adult. Usually their
singing is not yet rhythmically correct because
their pulse/breathing ratio has not yet settled
at 4:1, and because their voices are still light,
non-resonant, hovering and silvery. They feel
completely satisfied and fulfilled when presented
with music consisting only of a single melodic
line. They feel nothing lacking in this experience,
as adults usually do. They long for a variety of
instrumental sound and timbre, seeking less
for resonance in the sense of several voices or
instruments sounding together than for the tone
characteristics of the materials which compose
the instrument. They wish to hear the sounds of
the wood, the metal, the air, the string. They love
sounds not simply for the joy of making them
even if it often seems that way but because the
sound gives them exciting news about the inner
structure of the object, and it thereby stimulates
repetition. In their unprejudiced state they
perceive in particular the sounding movement
which manifests the nature of the object when it
CHAPTER 1
is touched, knocked or dropped.42 Consequently
up to first grade (6 years), singing and playing
an instrument are not done simultaneously, in
order for the child to have a clear tone experience.
In summary the musical experience of the young
child is one of a single melody line with a simple
rhythm.
All rhythm is based on the mysterious
connection between pulse and breath,43 that is,
a ratio of 4:1 in adults, but most children do not
reach this steady ratio until 9 or even 11 years of
age. Around the age of 5, the rhythmic system
(that is, the breathing and circulation) reaches a
more mature stage in its development; the growth
forces then leave it free so the child may want a
certain swinging quality in the songs; this is not a
strong rhythm but a gentle rocking much as when
one pushes a child on a swing. What is called beat
can wait until after the age of 9.
For an adult the ground tone, the tonic, is
almost always the reference point, the foundation
of the melody. For the child the melody moves
around a note but [it is] one which to the ear never
sounds fixed in the way a tonic does. The childs
interest is focussed on the intervals between the
notes; these intervals are open to him in every
sense.44 The most appropriate music for children
up to 9 years old is pentatonic, a subsection of
which is termed mood of the fifth (interval) and
is particularly appropriate for children up to age 7.
(For further explanation see the Appendix.)
(10) The Language Sense
The language or speech sense opens up a
world different from that of the musical element
that we simply hear. Hearing a language we
disregard the musical element, of how it is spoken,
and focus on what is said. The vowel A can be
said at any pitch, but listening we would disregard
the vibrations we hear and also the whole musical
element to reach something of a higher order than
music language.45
It is not known how a child learns his
mother tongue. It is not something automatic or
completely instinctive, for without hearing the
language, he cannot learn it. Somehow babies
24
seem able to understand intuitively what is said to
them. There is a large gap between the language a
young child can understand and the language that
child uses. Babytalk, the nonsense sounds which
parents may make to the baby, is disrespectful and
futile. The second and third years are especially
important for language development. When a
child is able to say I for the first time, it is a
miracle of inner understanding, the first step in
consciousness of self; the child is not thinking
in imitation. The child needs to frequently hear
conversations, firsthand and grammatically rich,
with him/herself and with others together
with songs, nursery rhymes, dandling rhymes
and so on, all repeated over and over again. Its
importance cannot be overestimated. Traditional
nursery rhymes, games, songs and stories seem
ideal for infants to acquire a wide vocabulary, a
sense of rhythm, a sense for numbers, a feel for
language and a deepened imagination.46 The
quality of the verbal environment has a great
effect on play, subsequent reading ability, learning
and higher-order thinking.
Speech begins with babies playing with
sounds and mimicking adults. A 2-year-old may
say, for example, Ann, no! when she touches
something she ought not to. Termed egocentric
speech, it becomes internalised as inner speech
between the ages of 3 and 7, ages 3 to 5 being
especially important; as the prefrontal cortex
matures, the child says words to himself (not out
loud), bringing them under his own control until
eventually inner speech becomes an instinctive
tool with which to think, to think before speaking
and to communicate thoughts in speech and
writing. Using inner speech effectively enables
children to better remember information and
events, solve problems (by talking through
the steps in their heads), organise and apply
information, study for exams and understand and
remember what they read.47 It may be that inner
speech feeds the development of the frontal
cortex that will later be responsible for abstract
thought.
To develop inner speech children need rich
language models and, particularly, exposure
to spoken, reflective thinking in adults in

meaningful, everyday contexts, a linguistic
environment which is coordinated with the
visual environment the child is experiencing.48
Research on the development of auditory abilities
shows that children of even 6 years old are
still immature in their ability to discriminate
frequency and duration in speech; what they
need is slow, repetitive talk with emphasis on
word inflections.49 Kindergarten teachers speak
particularly slowly and clearly. Parents know how
much children like hearing repetition. Somehow
most parents seem able instinctively to use
language with the child which is just one step
ahead of the childs current ability, as if somehow
always preparing him for the next step. The stage
from 3 to 7 years is particularly important for the
development of inner speech and understanding
of oral language. Once these are mastered, the
child is ready for all later learning, including
reading with understanding. Although it is
common today for progress in reading to fall off
after third or fourth grade, many studies show
that children who are superior in oral language
in kindergarten and first grade later excel in
reading and writing in the middle grades. After
third grade, reading comprehension is much more
closely related to overall listening comprehension
(for example, the ability to understand and
remember stories or reports they have heard) than
it is to the ability to read the words themselves.50
A major factor in both poor reading and poor
spelling is poor critical listening abilities.51
Teachers need to speak with clear enunciation
and good breath, almost as an instinct, to give
children good models for imitation. Parents need
to be told that children need a rich foundation
of language. More and more children now are
linguistically malnourished,52 and most learning
disabilities are related to underlying language
problems. Not all children learn to develop inner
speech. The poor quality of daycare (in the US
50% are inadequate53) is one likely reason; time
spent watching television is another.
The vowels vary between languages and
dialects and correspond to our expressive and
emotional movements and feelings. With the self-
movement sense we can observe as movements
25
What Young Children Need for Healthy Development
our own expressions and emotions. It is the
opposite of the language sense for which we
must not only erase the vibrations we hear and
our own expressions and emotions, but also the
musical element, and we must disregard ourselves
completely in order to observe in another
person the emotional and formative elements of
language. The organ of the language sense is the
reversed sense of own movement, so the better the
child develops his/her sense of self-movement, the
better will be his/her language sense later.
(11) The Concept Sense
No one can say exactly what he means. A
person will be understood only when his words
are overrided because the listener has gone
further, to the idea behind the words. This ability
uses the concept sense to reach the meaning,
concepts and ideas that lie behind what is said
and live in a silent world, on a higher plane than
language. It is through the transformed organ of
the life sense that the concept sense functions.
Thus the concept sense can be considered to be
opposite the life sense, the sense for ones own
constitution, the sense that feels pain. The more
the life sense is developed and so the more there
is to be sacrificed, to be completely forgotten the
better one can enter the world of ideas with the
concept sense.
If someone passes through a phase in life
when there is much personal suffering, then the
nonessential dross of material life falls away and
truth arises; (s)he finds what is not important and
who are true friends; (s)he sees life from a new,
truer perspective. People develop a sense for truth
from situations where there is much suffering and
grief; that is why wisdom is crystallised sorrow.54
It is very important that children sometimes suffer
the pain of waiting, of having to do things they
dislike and of not always getting what they want.
Only when someone has experienced inner pain
through his life sense can (s)he erase or sacrifice
this feeling, this experience, to feel pain when
someone does not speak the truth.55 Efforts of will
practised in childhood call forth the capacity for
sacrifice later on.56
CHAPTER 1

(12) The Ego Sense
This sense perceives the ego of another
person. Like seeing and hearing, it does not
depend on a conclusion. The perception is a
simple fact, a direct, real, independent truth. We
especially notice the ego of another when we have
a disagreement or fight with him/her. A person
(rather than a dog) stepping on our foot is a direct
fact; we immediately perceive the ego of another
and may feel angered or insulted. It seems that
we notice so many senses as a result of painful
experiences.
The sense of touch needs to be well developed
in childhood, as it lays the foundation for the ego
sense. With the ego sense we meet the conductor
of the super-concert, which is language,57 for
we become aware of the ego or I of another,
of someone else as an individual. It tells us of
the individuality behind the language he uses,
behind the meanings and concepts of his words,
in other words the intent, conviction and honesty
of the speaker. It tells us whether he really means
what he says or has a hidden agenda. It tells us
if someone such as a politician or leader can be
trusted and relied upon to lead us.
We experience our I as being within our
physical body (although it is not) only because
of the sense of touch. With the touch sense we
confront the world and close ourselves off from
it. With the ego sense it is as if we undo that;
unconsciously we let go of the link with our own
I, to erase completely the fact that oneself is an
individuality, so as to become directed outward to
break through the physical nature of the other, to
meet the I of that other person. The I of both
persons should remain free, but two mistakes are
often made that are tremendous attacks on the
I.
Firstly, in a less than wakeful state we allow
ourselves to be misled, for example by advertising.
Secondly, instead of leaving the I of the other
free so he can judge for himself and make up
his own mind, we try to foist our opinions and
convictions on others.58 It is a very wakeful
process to perceive the I of others; we need to
be completely awake spiritually, a capacity first
acquired by a sound development of the sense of
touch.59 The motionless human form makes the
sense of touch most available to be used in reverse
for the ego sense.
The Development of the Senses
The childhood years up to 21 can be
considered the time of the physical development
of the senses; nevertheless the senses are active
capacities that can be developed throughout life.
In each seven-year developmental period of the
child, certain senses develop more than others.
In the first such period it is the four will senses
that are the first to be active and particularly
develop. In earliest infancy the life sense tells the
baby when he is hungry and he cries. It seems that
the sense of smell tells the newborn where is his
mothers nipple; at first, feeding seems to involve
the senses of touch and smell rather than taste.
The sense of balance is the last of the will senses
to develop. The will senses are the bodily senses
directed inwards to the childs physical body. The

Table 2. Progression of erasures for the higher senses

Sense operates in erased are

Hearing the world of sound oneself (own movements, expressions and emotions)
Language the world of language all the above, also musical element and individual
letters
Concept the world of concepts/ideas all the above, also language
Ego all the above, also concepts, ideas and opinions

26
 What Young Children Need for Healthy Development

child in this period is generally in movement and
can be characterised as a doer.
It is the middle, feeling realm of the child that
is particularly developed in the middle period
from ages 7 to 14. The child now looks out into
the world with the four soul senses in particular.
Beauty is especially important to him. The arts
are now much needed. Painting is central to
the development of all four middle senses. The
plastic arts of modelling, sculpture, woodwork,
etc., particularly involve the will senses but relate
them to the feeling life. The arts involving music
and language (including drama and poetry)
particularly involve the spiritual senses but
bring them into the sphere of feeling.60 Through
speaking and singing in a foreign language, the
sensitivity and delicacy of the senses of hearing
and language are enhanced.61 The child in this
stage can be considered an artist.
The senses of language, concept and ego
are particularly developed after puberty when
the astral body is unsheathed and abstract,
intellectual thinking is born. The period from
age 14 to 21 is a stage of turning inward with
the thinking, a time of pondering on the human
world. The adolescent is a thinker. The
organs used for the will senses enable, by their
transformation or reversal, the use of the four
spiritual senses. Thus the quality of the spiritual
senses developed in this period depends very
much on the quality of the will senses developed
in the seven years from birth. Again it is the
earliest years that form or not the foundation for
what follows.

The Twelve Senses as Polarities

Inward senses
Outward senses

1. TOUCH 12. EGO SENSE
Determining boundaries of Breaking through anothers boundaries
own physical body (perceive honesty and integrity in
spirit of another)

2. LIFE SENSE 11. CONCEPT SENSE
Perception of own etheric/life body Perception of life-form of anothers thoughts

3. SELF-MOVEMENT SENSE 10. LANGUAGE SENSE
Perception of movement of Perception of movement, colour, mood
physical body (own and anothers) and emotion in speech; handling/
expressing the spirit through speech

4. BALANCE 9. HEARING
Perception of relationship of physical body Rising to the spirit of matter; out of
to gravity; security of stance in physical space ourselves in a weightless space

5. SMELL 8. TEMPERATURE
Emptying oneself and being Pouring out into the world with ones
filled (materially) interest (non-materially)

6. TASTE 7. SIGHT
Controlling the ponderable: Experiencing the imponderable
what forms own body, the microcosm (effect of sunlight) in the macrocosm

27
CHAPTER 1

28
 Chapter 2.

What Children Receive Sensory Damage,

Particularly from Television
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Light and Its Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Some Effects of Television Light, Pictures and Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
(A) The rapid firing of TV pictures what happens in the brain
(B) Television as sensory deprivation
(C) Confusion of reality with fantasy
(D) Television lessens individuality
(E) Images have power we become what we see
(F) Characteristics of television pictures and programmes
(G) Violence
Particular Effects of Television on Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
(H) Brain growth and myelination
(I) Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, learning & behaviour
(J) Damaged development of language skills
(K) Delayed gratification and a sense of time
(L) Noise bombardment, beat and loud music
(M) W hat children really see on television
(N) Perspective
What Children Forego by Watching Television . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
(O) Loss of imagination, childrens consequent inability to play
(P) Loss of ability to imitate
(Q) Loss of movement
(R) Childrens hands development hindered and lack of touch experiences
(S) Sleep
(T) Young children need a god
(U) Television shatters family life
Treatment for TV-damaged Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Giving up the TV Habit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Sense Disorders in Adulthood, Implications for Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

29
CHAPTER 2
Introduction
For adults the powers of thinking and of
judgment serve as a dam against the flooding in
of sense impressions. An adult can reason over
his/her sense experiences and transform them
into a soul experience, with his/her physical
body largely untouched. It is not so with the
young child. (S)he cannot stop an impression and
think it over; (s)he has nothing to protect him/
her from the continual bombardment of sense
impressions, the effects of which go physiologically
right into the physical body. In an adult only a
representation of light gets beyond the eye, but
in the child each blood corpuscle is in some way
inwardly stirred by the light.62 The childs tasting
extends far beyond his stomach, liver and spleen.
(S)he hears music less with the ear than with his/
her whole body which vibrates and lives in this
musical element.63 A few adults can remember
the taste of a story heard when very young.
In practise most children in the West suffer
a daily bombardment of the senses. Typically
they may: eat breakfast with the television on,
ride to school in a car with the radio on whilst
also hearing noisy traffic, in school sit under
fluorescent lights, hear a sudden loud voice over
the tannoy system, on the way home be taken
shopping to a supermarket or mall and in the
evening watch television and play electronic/
computer games. Obvious results from the
stress of this overstimulation of the senses are
various symptoms of hyperactivity, with a lack
of groundedness and difficulties in playing and
learning, as well as being difficult to live with.
Modern technology in its many forms is
the prime cause of overstimulation of childrens
senses. Television is now singled out for study as
it is so prevalent most homes have at least one
and because the total hours spent by children
watching it are so high.
Watching television causes overstimulation of
two senses (mainly the visual, also the hearing)
and sensory deprivation for the others. Both play
and behaviour are affected. The play-deprived
child lacks sensory experiences and needs play
therapy in kindergarten; this does not depend on
30
socio-economic background but on the amount
of family TV viewing.64 The epidemic of children
with learning disabilities of various kinds is
unique in that for the first time the rich are
affected almost as much as the poor; the common
factor is the changed lifestyle they all watch a
great deal of television. They lack language skills;
television is not interactive and cannot tailor
conversation to the needs of the child.
Kindergarten teachers find many children
arrive less able to talk, listen and move and with
fewer social skills. Grade teachers in both the US
and Europe say that, instead of teaching one class
of twenty children, they now have to teach twenty
individuals, each demanding attention, unable to
wait, impulsive, lacking self-discipline, motivation
and task-persistence; they have a short attention
span and are disorganised.65 Additionally the
children have problems integrating what they
learn because they lack personal experiences
and so lack, as it were, the pegs in the brain on
which to hang the new information. Possibly the
majority of children today in the US and Europe
lack reverence and curiosity and have a withered
capacity to wonder, yet the ancient Greek dictum
holds, All knowledge should have wonder for its
seed.
Light and Its Effects
Since time immemorial the sun has been
considered a being of fire, a being of power and
a being of light and has been worshipped. It is a
revelation of the divine. The outer physical sun
can be likened to an enormous cosmic magnifying
glass, a focal point in which all the energy, heat
and light of the cosmos is concentrated and
distributed again.66 Whatever is out in the cosmos
is also in us, in some way, in miniature. Among
other things the sun enables the growth of plants
on which we and animals depend and provides
the light by which we see.
From a purely scientific viewpoint, light is
seen as electromagnetic radiation. Visible light
comprises wavelengths of about 380 nanometres
(violet) to about 800 nm (red); 3% of light is
invisible, the ultraviolet from around 180380

nm. We need all these frequencies in one way
or another to promote our health and reduce
disease. Sunshine is an essential nutrient. The
modern habit of using sunglasses has a negative
effect on our health67 as also do sunscreen
creams (they deprive us of vitamin D and their
ingredients are potentially harmful), but sunhats
are recommended and overexposure (sunburn) is
harmful.68
Heliotherapy, by which patients are exposed
to controlled amounts of sunlight to cure or
alleviate illness, was a successful treatment of
a variety of serious illnesses for about 75 years
until the mid-20th century. Sunbathing early
in the morning coupled with a nutritious diet
produced the best results. With the growth of the
pharmaceutical industry, heliotherapy fell into
disuse. A modern notion that sunbathing risks
skin cancer (malignant melonoma) is a fallacy.
Outdoor workers seldom contract it. Sunbathing
is dangerous for those who are on a standard,
high-fat American diet or who do not get an
abundance of vegetables, whole grains and fresh
fruits.69 However, babies up to twelve months
need to be kept out of the sun and children need
to be protected from intense sun exposure to
avoid possibly developing melanoma in later life.70
Besides producing images via the retina of the
eye, light rays pass via neurochemical channels to
the principal light-reception glands (the pineal and
pituitary) and in turn affect the hypothalamus
which then regulates hormones involved in
regulation of sleep, mood, puberty and ovarian
cycles. The hypothalamus also causes the
pituitary to stimulate the endocrine system and its
multitude of hormones and therefore affects also
sexuality and fertility.
Light absorbed by the eye is ultimately
absorbed into all the bodys cells.71 Photobiology
the study of the effect of light on living things
shows that light is a kind of food, so changes
in light wavelength change the nourishment that
reaches the cells.72 This fact is used in medicine;
for example, blue light is all that is needed to
cure neonatal jaundice.73 Light interacts with
food at a cellular level as the pigments in food
31
What Children Receive Sensory Damage
have their own wavelength resonances.74 Herpes
infections and psoriasis represent imbalances in
the ultraviolet range; their treatments combine
light therapy with ingestion of certain herbs
and foods.75 There may be an interaction of
wavelength resonance between chemical food
additives (for example, artificial colourings
and flavourings) and the television or other
artificial light a childs body takes in, resulting in
hyperactivity and allergies.76
Modern lifestyles mean many people now
work under fluorescent lighting. These lights may
be a main cause of melanoma,77 among other
things. They are banned in German hospitals and
other medical facilities because of the raised levels
of stress hormones they cause. When fluorescent
lighting in the classrooms of handicapped
children was replaced by full-spectrum lighting,
behaviour and hyperactivity were much
improved.78 Another study found a 32% decrease
in hyperactivity when fluorescent lights were
removed from classrooms. Switching to full-
spectrum fluorescent lighting also caused dental
cavities in the children to fall by two thirds; other
studies have shown the more sunlight children are
exposed to, the fewer their cavities.
Many imagine that any effect of television
light occurs solely through the eyes. However,
the fact that the above results with handicapped
children were highly significant for blind and
sighted children equally shows that light affects us
strongly and not only through the eyes. Scientists
have produced much evidence that light in the
body provides the energy, the driving force, for
all the molecules in the body (see Appendix).
The light photons are distributed over the entire
range of electromagnetic frequencies and perform
different functions at different frequencies.
Photons switch on body processes like a conductor
brings each instrument into the collective sound.
DNA, which is an essential source of photon
emissions, seems to be the master tuning fork of
the body. Photons offer an explanation of how cell
coordination and cell communication occur, how
carcinogens cause cancer and how homeopathy
and acupuncture work.
CHAPTER 2
All living things emit light as photons
in electromagnetic waves (termed biophoton
emissions), in a characteristic way for each
species. Humans emit the fewest biophotons. If
a person is healthy, the emissions are in a very
coherent pattern. The human pattern shows
internal rhythms and also reflects the rhythms
of the world and of the universe. Stress causes
the emission rate to increase. The emissions of
a cancer patient have lost both coherence and
natural periodic rhythms. Research is sorely
needed to measure the effect on biophoton
emissions of a persons watching television; such
research could give a scientifically acceptable
measure of televisions damage to health and
possible causing of cancer.
Inside a (cathode ray) television a 25,000
volt gun fires an electron stream at phosphors
on the screen which then glow, and their light is
projected into the viewers eyes;79 only the narrow
spectra of red, blue and green phosphorescent
light are projected. Furthermore, television
screens emit electromagnetic waves that affect
people in the room even if they disregard the
screen, as well as creating zones of disturbance
that affect people in rooms above and below for
several storeys (see Appendix).
Some Effects of Television Light,
Pictures and Images
(A) The rapid firing of television pictures
what happens in the brain
A slowed-down film of a TV screen would
show only one dot at a time of cold, fluorescent
light. Dots are turned on and off in rapid
succession as a grid of lines is scanned to the
bottom of the screen and back to the beginning
again. The speed at which dots are sequentially
turned on and off 12,500,000 per second
means that the television projects thirty sequential
images per second.80 This high speed causes the
eye to see simply a meaningless flicker of light.
Babies and infants sight is developing and
sensitive; it is likely that the flickering electronic
32
light of the television screen is particularly
stressful for them. Instead of focussing, the eye
reacts by staring blankly as it would at a blank
surface, its muscles as if frozen. Hundreds of
studies show the direct connection between eye
movement and thinking. In moving the eyes seek
information and actually cause the person to be
alert and active in his mind. Conversely, when the
eyes do not move but stare obliviously, thinking
is diminished.81 This explains why it is so hard to
remain mentally alert whilst watching television.
The rapid succession of dots entering the
eye causes a picture to be reconstituted in the
brain, in fact a series of pictures so fast (about ten
per second) that only a small percentage can be
consciously registered. Most go immediately into
the subconscious, which is strongly affected.82
Thus television bypasses consciousness for
images need no thought. As long as the eyes
are open, images enter and are automatically
recorded in the memory.83 As the images go in
unconsciously, they are not filed away and so
are difficult to recall. It is not surprising that half
of viewers watching a news programme could
not recall a single item of it just a few minutes
afterwards.84
Exactly why this happens has been made
clear by the Emerys comprehensive research.
The left side of the brain is where language,
communicative abilities and cognitive thought
(comprehension) are organised. The nature of
the processes carried out in the left cortex and
particularly the common integrative area are
unique to human life. It is the centre of logic,
logical human communication and analysis,
integration of sensory components and memory,
the basis of mans conscious, purposeful and time-
free abilities and actions. It is the critical function
of man that makes him distinctively human.85
The Emerys showed that people habituate to
repetitive light stimuli so that the brain stops
processing the information going in; the common
integrative area in particular goes into a holding
pattern. Meanwhile the right brain (which deals
with more subjective cognitive processes such as
fantasy, dream images and intuition) receives the

TV images, but as the bridge between the right
and left brains has been effectively shattered, all
cross-processing, the making conscious of the
unconscious data and bringing it to usability, is
eliminated.86
Because the eye is staring at a single dot of
light, it causes physiologically a state of absent-
mindedness and sleepy drowsiness, no matter
how interesting the images might be. Research
shows that the repetitive light stimuli of television
cause the brain to shut down as the beta waves
characteristic of waking consciousness are
replaced by the slower, alpha waves of someone
not paying attention to anything, in a completely
passive state, unaware of the world outside the
pictures in his head.87 Irrespective of the content
of the programme, the brainwaves quickly change
over to alpha characteristic of meditation,
trance and sleep-walking.88 The difference is that
during meditation the consciousness is directed
inwards and the ego actively and freely creates
true, living, inner pictures within the soul, which
thereby connect thinking with feeling, heart
with mind, and affect the person in his inmost
core.89 Watching television is pseudo-meditation,
the ego (or I) on which we rely for our interest
in the world ever awake to sense impressions
and supervising our every action, inaction and
attention, the boss, relegated to the sidelines,
inactive, whilst other peoples pictures stream
continuously into the subconscious or soul.90
Many imagine that watching television is
relaxing. A tired mind generally results from a
single pattern of thinking. Working in an office
a person may have focussed thoughts in line,
objectified, analytical, isolated from the senses
and feelings. Obsessive thinking continues when
work is over. Sport, meditation and yoga open
alternative realms of mental awareness, but many
choose alcohol, drugs and/or television instead.
However, television only gives escape from
obsessive thought patterns, filling the mind with
the thoughts and images of others and leaving it
weary.91
33
What Children Receive Sensory Damage
(B) Television as sensory deprivation
Watching television, people are isolated from
one another and almost cut off from their own
senses. Only sight and hearing are functioning
and then only in a very narrow range, the
people sitting in dim light with eyes staring at
an electronic light for hours, the body functions
stilled.92 It is a kind of sensory deprivation and
could be seen as a form of torture.
Watching television gives people a feeling
comparable to that experienced during hypnosis.
The conditions of sensory deprivation are able
to cause people to set aside ordinary reality and
substituting the reality the television offers.93
To deliberately alter the state of consciousness
of a person (for example, to brainwash him),
his pattern of ordinary awareness must first
be disrupted (disassociation) and then a new
pattern substituted (restructuring) to reassemble
the disassembled pieces; drugs, Sufi dancing,
repetitive mantras and television can all induce
this state.94 For this reason television is ideal for
advertising with a few simple techniques the
existing mental set of the viewer is shattered
and in the restructured awareness a product is
incorporated as the solution to a psychological
need of the viewer. Only fifteen or twenty seconds
is needed. Advertisers pay US$ 100,000 for one
such commercial. This is indubitable proof that
television changes behaviour through the power of
its images.
(C) Confusion of reality with fantasy,
between concrete and imaginary
Seeing is believing as the saying goes. The
fact that the senses are intrinsically believable is
the foundation of human knowledge, the base of
human understanding of reality, of sanity. They
give a position in space and the qualities of the
world around. A person trusts the information
his senses give to be accurate, and if something
does not correspond to his previous experience,
he becomes suddenly attentive until he has
sorted out the reason and the new information
is incorporated into his picture of the world.
(Difference is at the base of all knowledge.)
CHAPTER 2
The senses process perceptions in exactly the
same way, whether they come from natural life
or artificial smells, tastes, sights and sounds. So
much information comes to us indirectly, already
processed by other minds. With the electronic
media, information is further removed from
reality as we see images altered in time, speed and
sequence, images of things which could never
happen in reality; yet our senses take them in
and treat them the same regardless. The nave
and automatic trust we have in the reliability of
images leaves us open to exploitation by all media,
especially the moving-image media, because we
can so easily believe their questionable sensory
information.95
It is clearly natural for humans to see all
things as real. Adults find it almost as hard as
children to separate what is on television from
what is in life.96 Over a five-year period a quarter
of a million viewers wrote letters to a television
doctor, mainly asking his advice, although he
was a fictional character.97 Viewers sent a flood of
presents after a wedding on a popular UK soap
opera.98 In Brazil, after a popular character in a
soap opera was murdered on television, the public
was outraged; the actor who had played the role
of the murderer was in real life hunted down and
killed.
The real and the unreal are much intertwined.
An historical drama, for example, will have some
truth in it, but the viewer is unable to tell what
is true and what is not; most will not even think
about it. Most viewers give concrete validity to
what they see on television at least most of the
time.99 There is so little interpersonal sharing of
intimate problems today that it is not surprising
that viewers use the fictional content of soap
operas, situation comedies and dramas to try to
solve problems in their own relationships.
Heavy viewers, in particular, have a distorted
view of reality. An American study found they
are likely to overestimate the proportion of
world population living in the US, they seriously
overestimate the proportion of the population in
professional jobs, and they drastically overestimate
the number of police and the amount of violence.100
34
Propaganda works on the same principle of
disassociation and restructuring as do hypnotism,
brainwashing and advertising. Viewers sitting in
conditions of sensory deprivation with others
images streaming into their subconscious
this is an ideal situation for the implanting of
propaganda and the imposition of autocracy.
Like the hypnopaedic machine in Aldous
Huxleys Brave New World, the moving-image
media channel much of peoples information
directly into the mass subconscious. Gerald
Levin, chairman of Time-Warner, said, A human
being defines himself through the newspapers
he reads, through the films he sees in movie
houses, through his favourite TV programmes,
and through the music he listens to. If our digital
network will permit people to consume more
information and entertainment in a purposeful
way, they will grow as persons.101 According to
him it seems many people identify themselves
through consumption and entertainment, and the
moving-image media and Internet are supposed to
help them grow. Individualities are supposed to
have a nice life in a collective mind according
to Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, who often
speaks of striving towards a collective mind
and who welcomes the beginnings of a collective
society.102 Watching television, people are seeing
the same, thinking the same, feeling the same
and even going to the toilet at the same time
when the programme is over; they are unified
within a secondhand, reconstructed experience.
In Huxleys world people are controlled by the
infliction of pleasure. They love the oppressive
technology that reduces their capacity to think.
Today information overload (and misinformation)
reduces people to passivity and egoism. Truth
is drowned in a sea of irrelevance, and culture
becomes trivial.103 The human appetite for
distraction means that tyranny can enter by the
back door, appearing surreptitiously. Steiner
feared that love of comfort would be mans
undoing.

(D) Television lessens individuality
When watching television, people are unified
within the same, secondhand, reconstituted
experience. The individuality of children is
likewise reduced as they all have the same
experience. Such a collective consciousness
arising in childhood is even more alarming.
Indeed, research on 13- to 15-year-olds shows that
65% of the content of their consciousness and
experience stems from the mass media, principally
television.104
The consciousness which television-
watching promotes is a secondhand, spectator
consciousness, whereas what both the individual
and society need is a firsthand, participatory
consciousness.
Illustration 1. TV experiences are secondhand.
The real thing is much better.
(E) Images have power we become
what we see
A wealth of evidence of the effects of image
and form is presented in an excellent treatise
written by the Samuelses. They make clear how
the images in our mind affect us physiologically
and psychologically and how we slowly become
these images.105 There are three processes by
which this happens:
35
What Children Receive Sensory Damage
1. Images affect us by the processes used in
meditation and visualisation.
Hermes Trismegistus stated that a person
who holds a sacred image in his mind experiences
the effects produced by the specific energy of
that image.106 Many ancient peoples have had
similar views, holding that there are concrete
powers inherent in form and colour. They created
sculptures to ingest the images and retain them
in the body as a system of energies, with states
of mind and systems of belief thereby created.
Thus seeing sculptures created states of mind and
systems of belief.107 In many religions (the Hebrews
aside) images continue to be used up to the
present day to inform universal understanding.108
It is a fundamental principle of yoga that
focussing the mind upon objects, whether outside
the body or in the mind, affects the entire body.
In an advanced yogic state, there is a union with
the object or image (such as an egg or mandala);
the image is energy which travels as light via the
brain to all the cells.109 In the religious expression
of nonwestern cultures, certain forms are held in
common (for example, the egg and the mandala).
These represent universal energy formations. It
is claimed that the image of the egg, the seed of
life, enters the body and mind and eggness in
terms of perfection, calmness and centredness
is instilled in the observer.110 The egg image is
central to many meditative practices that use
imagery.
Someone who contemplates a sculpture
of Buddha for long enough becomes mentally
more like the Buddha. No thought is necessary.
The image goes in and causes it.111 Someone
who observes the rectangular form of a highrise
building literally ingests, absorbs, remembers the
image and adopts its character.112 On the subject
of architecture, Steiner wrote, Many people
believe that the materialism of modern times
comes from so much materialistic literature being
read. [T]his is but a minor influence. What the
eye sees is much more significant, for it influences
the dynamics of the soul on a more or less
unconscious level.113
CHAPTER 2
2. Images affect us at a cellular level by
biophysical processes.
For the majority of people in the world,
image, form, colour and symbol are concrete,
physical and real, capable of affecting the viewer.114
Neurophysiologists have shown how the viewer
is affected. From the cerebral cortex where
images are stored, there are neural connections
to the autonomic nervous system (which controls
breathing rate, blood pressure, pulse, sweating,
etc.), which in turn is connected to the adrenal
cortex and pituitary (which secretes hormones
regulating secretion of other glands especially
thyroid, sex and adrenal glands). The adrenal
glands secrete steroids, which regulate metabolic
processes, and epinephrine (adrenalin) which
causes the fight or flight reaction.115 Television
is provoking, but direct reaction would be
nonsensical. Instead viewers are left passive and
frustrated while their pulse, blood pressure,
hormone levels and so on are changed.116 Within
the viewers body is a continuous alternation
of activation and repression which is stressful
and to no purpose. It seems to be a major cause
of hyperactivity in children as soon as the
television is switched off, they burst into fast,
aimless movement, overactive, irritable and
frustrated.117 Another cause of hyperactivity is the
stream of technical effects used to jolt the viewers
attention and keep them watching.
There are many practical applications of the
physiological effects of images in the modern
world. In all kinds of sports, visualisation can
be used to rehearse a competition and has been
found as effective or better than practising
physically.118 Meditation and visualisation have
been used successfully in the treatment of cancer.
Autogenic training uses visualisation together
with standard treatment and has been widely
used in Europe to successfully treat a variety of
diseases.119
3. By emulation we become our images.
If the image watched is a person such
as a popular TV or film star, for example,
Batman then his character is absorbed, and
36
the viewer becomes more Batman-like. Watching
a newscaster we absorb, besides the verbal
information and ideas, his image, behaviour,
movements, mannerisms, forcefulness or
peacefulness, tone of voice, way of relating to
others, the kind of person he is, his seriousness,
lightness, joyfulness and so on.120 We absorb it
all, and the more we watch, the more we become
like him.
Young children in particular imitate. It
continues automatically as emulation throughout
our lives. Husbands and wives, for example, grow
to resemble one another. Slowly we turn into
what we see.121 Unconsciously we absorb from
newspapers, books, advertisement billboards and
television throughout our lives images, stereotypes
of, for example, how other people would have
us be the ideal subservient housewife or the
unemotional, hard-working, bread-winning man.
It is inevitable that the images are translated into
reality unless one is conscious that the image in
the mind is implanted.
(F) Characteristics of television pictures
and programmes
A distinct picture is hard to achieve, so all
programming must be skewed towards subjects
which give the biggest contrast of foreground and
background, signal and noise, colour and tone.
Thus the images shown tend to be larger, less
detailed, not subtle but simple and obvious.122
Many TV images are closeups of the human face
because that gives the clearest image. Sound
quality is poor, in part due to the high-pitched
whistle that issues from the set.123
Subtle feelings do not come across well, so
programmes must be limited to stronger emotions
that can be conveyed in larger facial expressions
and body movements.124 TV drama needs human
crises to be able to deliver feeling. Violence is
best as it clearly delivers fear.125 It is an artificial
fear that over time dulls responses, yet the viewer
can become more paranoid about the real world.
Competition comes over well, power-sharing and
teamwork do not. Images of living things lose
the vitality of firsthand experience. Life is too

subtle to be conveyed well on television; death
comes over much more clearly as it has high visual
definition and conveys a strong emotion. To show
an event, for example, on the news, much is lost
in the editing (nuance and much more due to
limited time), so the result is distorted.126 Most
problems of modern society are too subtle and
complex for television to convey; if an attempt
is made, then a single starving family makes for
better television than the world food problem
(because the faces can be shown), as do the living
conditions in a poor area rather than housing
policy. Thus the constraints of the medium create
a bias against viewers understanding of society.127
The technology of fixation to keep the
viewer watching means that technical effects
(such as zooms, pans, changes of angle, cuts to
different scenes, images superimposed, words
on the screen, music and voiceovers) are used
for emphasis otherwise boredom would set
in. To emphasize the commercials vis--vis the
programmes, commercials contain double the
number of technical effects (that is, about 20 per
minute*).
Poor visual resolution means that large body
movements show best, so sports and conflict
are particularly suitable subjects. A study of a
single days news found that conflict and violence
comprised 50% of the television news but only
20% of the radio news. Television is suited to
objective data, brief, packaged information.
It is not suited to subtlety or complexity. To
keep viewer ratings high, a programme must
firstly be self-contained (requiring no sequence
or continuity), secondly not be perplexing
(contentment of mind is paramount) and
thirdly avoid exposition at any cost.128 The news
is a discontinuous collection of stories with
insufficient facts to form a judgment.129 The
television presents information in a form that is
simplistic, nonsubstantive (not having substance/
reality), nonhistorical and noncontextual, that is
to say, information packaged as entertainment.130
Instead it tells stories with dynamic images and
*1977 when Mander was writing
37
What Children Receive Sensory Damage
music. It is the bread and circuses of today;
amusements pacify discontent.131
He who pays the piper calls the tune. In
the US it is the big corporations in particular
that finance television, primarily the oil and
chemical companies. All is geared to keeping
viewers watching, hooked, feeling psychological
satisfaction, contentment, good about themselves,
so they will see the commercials that will change
their buying habits and keep the corporations
in profit. Only a tiny fraction of the potential
subject matter is shown. Television best delivers
the grosser kinds of programmes: sports,
violence, police action, as well as quiz shows, game
shows, soap operas, situation comedy and news
about murder, conflict, war, power politics and
charismatic leaders.132 It is not public taste; it is
the limits of this low-definition medium.
Good news does not make good television.
Television itself is not neutral, for it predetermines
who uses it, how they use it, the effects on
individual lives and the sort of political forms that
will inevitably emerge.133
Public discourse is very restricted by television.
Something in the nature of TV imagery allows
form to supersede content.134 A study showed
that in 1977 American voters had less knowledge
of the issues on which they were voting than
voters had thirty years earlier. Lippmann said,
There can be no liberty for a community which
lacks the means by which to detect lies.135 When
public issues are confined to television, the public
cannot process the information, and politicians
must avoid content and concentrate on style. Like
commercials, image politics is a form of therapy
and that is why charm, good looks, celebrity and
personal disclosure predominate; each candidate
must present his image in a way which makes
voters feel good about themselves.136
Indeed all great television commercials create
for viewers a comprehensive and compelling image
of themselves.137 It is no wonder that in all the
US presidential campaigns from Nixon onwards
only those politicians who neglected content in
favour of TV image won.
CHAPTER 2
(G) Violence
A comprehensive research study published in
Harvard Magazine found that the homicide rate
in Canada and the US almost doubled between
1945 (when television appeared) and 1970. In
South Africa the white homicide rate declined
gradually between 1945 and 1970; television was
allowed in 1975, and from then until 1983 the
white homicide rate increased by 130%. The
statistical implication is that television itself is a
cause of violence and not simply the violence on
television.138
Overstimulation causes desensitisation, yet
the world needs people to be more sensitive. The
desensitisation means an even greater stimulus is
needed to have the same effect. This seems to be
the case regarding violence in films for adults, as
more and more blood and murder are demanded;
non-network programmes in the US now depict
1319 violent acts per hour. Surprisingly, more
violence is shown on childrens programmes,
with 25 violent acts per hour in cartoons and toy
commercials. As young children usually cannot
follow what is happening, nor are they following
the dialogue, then perhaps more violent action is
needed to keep their attention.
Parents and children increasingly resort to
aggressive styles of communication and problem-
solving. They view violence and bullying in a
Illustration 2
HEARING:
It is as if what we hear enters
through the limb system, passes to
and is understood in the middle
system of feeling and pulse and
then is remembered in the head
system.
38
passive and disengaged manner, tolerating and
even condoning its destructive consequences.139
One result is that the general public is less likely
to get involved when bullying or violence is
witnessed in real life.
It is navely imagined that what we see and
hear are one world. When we are ill we realise
they are not the same; it is we who make it one. In
reality all the senses are different worlds and we
have to put them together. The world of hearing
works in one way and the world of vision in
exactly the opposite way.
Using the vision helps the incarnation of
the ego; the teacher may make use of this to
help children incarnate every morning. When,
however, a child becomes too deeply incarnated,
then the ego is lost, enslaved by the physical, and
can become criminal. Ideally children in grade
school are taught with energy and enthusiasm
so that what is taught is interesting and alive.
Otherwise surplus thinking forces rise up and, as
they are unmet, descend and bring about hard-
heartedness, finally filtering all the way into the
limbs. Mindless violence can result When
the light goes out in the head, the gun goes
off in the hand.140 Whilst watching television,
the visual overrides the aural. This means that
with inadequate correction by the thinking
consciousness, what enters through the eye can
directly lead to violence by the limbs.
VISION:
It is as if what we see enters the
head, passes to the middle sytem
and then on to the limb system.

Particular Effects of Television on
Children
(H) Brain growth and myelination
The brain, like a muscle, is developed with
use and particularly so during the critical years
from birth to age 7. At birth the brain is a quarter
of its adult weight, at age 7 it is 90%.141 Mental
stimulation such as from physical movement,
play, conversation, exploration and sensory
stimulation of all kinds causes the nerve cells to
enlarge, send out new branches and make more
connections, within and between areas. Branching
in an area (and new connections) continues as
long as stimuli come in to that area. When the
stimuli stop, the branching stops. We each have
a different pattern of branching depending on
our childhood experiences, that is, what we did
every day, how we thought and responded to the
world around us, what we learned and what we
chose to give our attention to.142 Although some
neural systems already enable basic activities
such as eating, most of the brain is uncommitted
tissue developed by the childs responses to his/
her particular environment. Profound differences
have been found in the structure of the brain
depending on what was taken in by the senses.143
Thus the way a child uses his/her brain causes
change in the structure and function of the brain,
and thereby also in his/her ability to learn.
Illustration 3. Schematic representation of branching and connections in a childs brain
(a) healthy branching (bushiness)
and connections (horizontal)
39
What Children Receive Sensory Damage
Specific skills in different areas of the brain
are developed at different stages in brain growth.
Myelination (the creation of a waxy, insulating
and protective coating around the outside of
neurons) begins before birth with the primitive
systems, such as those for sucking. It signifies
maturation of an area that is then less able to
adapt and change its functioning. The majority of
myelination has occurred by the age of 3 or 4.144
There appear to be sensitive periods in the brains
development critical for learning; if the chance is
missed for example by spending time watching
television instead it may be impossible to make
it up later. The process gradually continues in a
fixed order to increasingly higher-level systems
until lastly the association areas responsible for
the manipulation of highly abstract concepts are
coated and myelination ceases in the twenties. No
region operates efficiently until it is myelinated.
Perhaps for this reason students confused by
algebra in high school can find it easy in graduate
school.145 Making children master academic skills
before the appropriate area is myelinated can
cause a lower brain system to do the task. The
control centres of the large muscles of the limbs
take considerable time to develop and this occurs
before those for the fine muscles of the extremities
(such as the fingers) are developed. A child made
to write before the appropriate neuromotor
development will hold the pencil in his fist, close
to the palm;146 the habit will likely stay for life and
(b) heavy viewer, one pathway over-used,
lacks branching and connections
CHAPTER 2
the lower brain area involved is unavailable for
more appropriate use. Clearly a school curriculum
must be physiologically related to address the
developmental needs of the childs body, soul
and spirit.
(I) Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity
Disorder learning and behaviour
In the first three years the child learns to
walk, to speak and to think. This period is
crucial for the rest of his/her life. (S)he absorbs
sense experiences like blotting paper.147 All
sense impressions experienced at that time
are incorporated into his/her sensitive body.
Any deprivation then sensory, emotional or
physical retards the child for life. Too much
excitement causes a child to be overstimulated.
Overstimulation, such as from television or
video, makes the child nervous, discontented
and restless.148 Furthermore all the details of his
surroundings become his standard of acceptability
for his future life and future family.149
Watching television is one of several
factors that can cause hyperactivity, learning
and behaviour problems (for other factors see
Appendix). There is a clear link between ADHD
in children and alcoholism later in life.150 ADHD
can be thought of not as an attention disorder
(for full attention can be given to video games),
but as an intention (or will) disorder because the
child is unable to carry out and finish a task.151
The critical period theory of development holds
that there is an optimal time for particular types
of learning and that if the environment does
not give the essential stimulation at the time for
learning that concept or method of thinking, then
the opportunity may be irretrievably lost or made
up later only with great difficulty. Regarding the
potential function of specific areas of a childs
brain, one could say, Use it or lose it. The brain
seems to be developmentally ready to learn task
mastery at age three and four. The current ADHD
epidemic could be linked to the fact that most 3-
and 4-year-olds are passively watching videos and
television instead of actively creating, focussing,
concentrating and mastering tasks.152
40
(J) Damaged development of
language skills
Television is a poor teacher of language. It
is not interactive and cannot tailor conversation
to the needs of the individual child. Television
is the thief of time, that is, time that for
children would be better spent doing a variety
of things with parents and siblings, including
family conversation that builds language and
listening skills. Children without inner speech
are handicapped in many ways; such children
may learn to decode letters and words, to read,
but without comprehension. Children must have
good language development before they can get
the meaning of what they read. Many modern
children have difficulty with mathematics when
a problem is written in words, yet can do it if
written solely in numerals and signs; this suggests
a limitation of inner speech or higher order
thinking.
Words enable a kind of feedback, whether
they are read, written, mulled over alone
or spoken to an understanding person.
Understanding develops as patterns are noticed,
correspondences made and meaning derived
so that experiences (whether seen, heard, felt,
tasted, touched or read) are given a contextual
basis and incorporated into ones understanding
of the world at ones own pace. Television works
against the gradual building up of a childs own
view of the world; the present-centred medium
provides images and fragments of information at
great speed and without continuity or context so
that they can be neither incorporated nor later
remembered. Remembering needs a contextual
basis.
Sesame Street is a TV programme designed
to help children learn to read. Sadly many parents
believe it is educationally valuable. In fact it has
the same attention-grabbing visual effects as
other programmes (variety, novelty, action and
movement), it lacks meaningful dialogue, the
characters speech is poor in pace, volume and
clarity and besides has extra noise, vivid colour
and slapstick comedy.153 It has rapid changes of
context, defying sequence or logic, so the viewer

cannot see cause and effect or hold a train of
thought, all in direct opposition to the sustained
thinking needed to connect ideas and to
understand a written text.154
Whilst watching television, the brain is in the
alpha wave pattern virtual shut-down. Whilst
reading, the brain is very active and blood flow to
many areas is increased, with good readers using
both hemispheres and the prefrontal systems.155
In other words, whilst reading many different
areas are engaged and connected. The brain is
like a muscle in that it develops with work, and
clearly reading challenges it to work. When a child
reads, a continuous process is involved of creating
pictures in his/her mind of people, the scene
and surroundings, the feeling in the atmosphere,
the tones of voice and so on. Yet television works
against the creation of mental pictures. Studies
show a decrease of 20% in childrens creativity
as a result of watching television regularly. Dutch
research shows that television has a negative effect
on reading skills, particularly for more advanced
abilities needed for higher-level comprehension.
It was found that television: 1) displaces leisure
reading and so inhibits the growth of reading
skills, 2) needs less mental effort than reading,
3) may shorten childrens task persistence for
intellectual problems and 4) has particularly
negative effects for heavy viewers, socially
advantaged children and intelligent children.156
(K) Delayed gratification and a sense
of time
The present-centred medium of television,
with its non-sequential, discontinuous
programmes and psychologically penetrating
commercials, gives only a sense of the moment,
the instant, now. It promotes instant gratification
with no waiting. Children need to develop a
sense of time, of history and of the future so that
patience can develop as gratification is delayed, a
heightened mood of expectancy then leading to
a greater pleasure finally. Freud considered the
ability to delay as one of the most significant
early milestones in emotional development. More
recently a group of 4-year-olds were offered the
41
What Children Receive Sensory Damage
choice of eating one marshmallow immediately or
having two marshmallows later; the children were
followed up, and in their teens the differences
were startling. The children who had waited for
two were significantly better adjusted; those who
had poor control and could not wait, in their
teens coped poorly with stress, were less self-
confident and showed much less initiative.157
Difficulty delaying gratification and working
toward future goals are symptoms of people
with damage to prefrontal areas of the brain
and also of children with attention problems.158
Such children may have shortcomings in those
areas of the brain because of lack of appropriate
stimulation such as would have come from
reading and does not come from watching
television.
(L) Noise bombardment, beat and
loud music
Both before and after birth, babies are really
bothered by beat and loud music, but they like
soft, classical music, particularly Vivaldi.159 There
are irreplaceable structures in the ear that can
be permanently damaged during the early years
by loud noise, including music.160 A child needs
regular times of peace and quiet to digest, order
and reflect. An environment that an adult would
not consider particularly noisy can permanently
affect the development of language, listening
and even reading abilities.161 Music with a strong
regular beat may set up a rhythm in the brain
that interferes with normal processing; the brain
is unable to break its rhythm, to desynchronise
and think so the ability to think is blocked.162
Continual exposure to arrhythmic beats may also
irritate the brain, whatever the volume.163 Many
children are subjected to constant noise from
television, radio, etc., in the car, shops and so on;
it contributes to the overload of sensory input
on their nervous systems; their brains not yet
able to filter it out are overwhelmed; they either
tune out or become unmanageable.164 Adults
are less affected, but those working with constant
background pop music, such as in shops, take half
an hour longer to unwind after work.
CHAPTER 2
Physical education teachers note that more
children today are lacking a basic sense of internal
rhythm. What children need is to be rocked,
patted, stroked or danced with at the same time
as they hear beat in music in order to develop the
feel of the beat.165 Children exposed to too much
strong, external beat may become disoriented
and develop attention problems because they are
having difficulty reconciling their own inner beat
with the outside stimulus.166
(M) What children really see on television
To understand any picture or symbol, children
must be able to both create mental pictures and
reach back to past events that they have made
part of their experience by thinking. To interpret
closeups a considerable amount of analysing
and symbolising capacity is required of children.
To follow complicated time sequences and
multiple presentation techniques demands great
concentration and combining ability.167 A study in
1955 showed that films were not comprehended
as a totality, generally speaking, before the age of
10.168 Todays television with more technical events
is even more difficult for a child to understand.
Children younger than 10 years merely see one
picture replacing another with no connection in
time, a senseless mishmash. Whereas adults have
sufficient experience, memories and presence of
mind to tune in only to the content and decipher
the flickering images, for children the technical
peculiarities of that which they perceive are as
significant as the content.169 Research on 5- and
6-year-olds watching a television programme
where the commentary was changed partway
through showed that virtually none noticed they
were not able to link the visual with the auditory
in any case.
(N) Perspective
It was the artists of the Renaissance who first
mastered the ability to reproduce perspective,
that is, to transfer three dimensions to a two-
dimensional plane. The receptivity of perspective
proportions and ability for perspective drawing
first sets in between the eleventh and twelfth
years of life.170 Watching television damages
42
this capacity by its mechanism which negates
perspective; it flattens depth, its two-dimensional
screen continually requires a three-dimensional
grasping; any premature speeding-up (untimely
development) of dormant abilities which should
only gradually ripen weakens or corrupts
those abilities causing disharmony in the whole
organism.171
What Children Forego by Watching
Television
(O) Loss of imagination and resultant
inability to play
Play characterises childhood and is also
the signal of maturity. It gives zest to adult life,
providing interest, even harmless excitement. We
lose unwanted tension and breathe more easily.
Play transforms logic into creative imagination.
We play with ideas, invent and find solutions so
problems melt away. Doing things in the spirit
of play is ideal, it makes light of work, it is love
for life. Steiner tells us that freedom in play and
movement as a young child leads to freedom of
thought and action as an adult. In nursery and
kindergarten, Waldorf school methods try to
establish the fully active and creative spirit of play
so firmly that it will set the tone for the rest of
life.
Play is the highest expression of human
development in childhood.172 The benefits of
play are manifold physical, emotional, social,
moral, linguistic and aesthetic to name but a few.
As a child develops and different faculties unfold,
the character of his/her play changes continually,
something new constantly appears. His/her entire
being is involved, and given the opportunity play
would occupy all his/her waking moments. Once
the young child reaches the stage of being able to
create his/her own mental pictures (about age 4),
then (s)he becomes able to create with versatile
play materials all manner of fantasy-play that
is, if (s)he does not watch television. Otherwise
play is reduced to a reiteration of what (s)he has
seen on television, over and over as (s)he struggles
to digest it, limited and limiting, uncreative and
unsatisfying.

Without orderly will forces, creative fantasy
play will not happen, indeed nothing worthwhile
will happen in play. Children who cannot thus
play need to be taken back a step to experience
and imitate the rhythmic, meaningful work of
an adult and need the strong rhythm and warm
atmosphere of the kindergarten.173
Sadly childrens capacity for play is gradually
disappearing. Kindergarten teachers need to
show children how to play. Play both builds
and depends on imagination. The materialistic
onslaught particularly of television and modern
toys results in a withered imagination or none
at all. This is perhaps the greatest loss caused by
television loss of the ability to imagine, to create
pictures in the mind.
(P) Loss of ability to imitate
Young children, in particular from birth to
age 7, learn about the world by first absorbing
every sense impression into their inmost being
and right down to their toes, and then they
imitate. Their play is largely based on imitation of
the people and animals they see. It is a digestion
of their sense experiences and an incorporation of
them into their understanding of the world.
The best environment for normal
development of infants is sensitively
interactive with the young child, responsive
but not overwhelming and one which provides
psychological warmth, low punishment and
encouragement to develop in culturally relevant
ways.174 A machine cannot provide this.
Throughout the early childhood years, a child
needs a model for imitation, an example for
language and gesture, a living example of what it
is to be human.
It is natural for the young child up to age
9 to imitate, and this is their main means of
learning, even for walking, talking and thinking
that are perhaps the greatest achievements of a
human being. The young child uses his powers
of imitation, in his own imaginative and artistic
way, to attempt to do what he sees adults around
him doing, so how and what teachers and parents
do is very important. They need to act as models
worthy of imitation. Thus the young child is
43
What Children Receive Sensory Damage
primarily educated through his unconscious will,
through the actions of teachers and parents rather
than from their words or any artefact such as a
machine.
The perception by the child of someone
doing something is immediately passed over into
bodily movement, if possible. Passively watching
television shatters that unity. Thus more and
more children enter nursery and kindergarten
severely handicapped in that they are unable to
imitate. All addictions, including television, cause
paralysis of the will. Russian research on non-
imitators showed they had either stiff, red fingers
or soft, doughy fingers 175; warmth and massage
of the hands and feet resulted in a growing ability
to imitate sounds and so gradually to learn to
speak. Until about forty years ago (the advent of
television), kindergarten teachers took childrens
ability to imitate for granted and it was their
prime means of teaching. Sadly today the child
unable to imitate, almost as if frozen in time,
unable to join in, is common.
(Q) Lack of movement
Movement early on facilitates intellectual
ability later. Physical movement causes the
creation and stimulation of pathways and
connections in the brain. All manner of playful
movements in babyhood and infancy count.
Babies who never crawl may well suffer later from
dyslexia. German research with schoolchildren
shows that unless a child can do certain physical
movements, he is unable to carry out certain
mathematical processes. Certain physical
exercises, the socalled floor exercises, that
mimic for example the turning over by a tiny baby
and the crawling of a nine-month-old can be done
daily in school for six weeks (after the seventh
birthday, cautions Audrey McAllen), and thereby
the number of children with learning difficulties
is reduced.176 Sensory integration therapy for
children with learning disabilities is based on this
relationship between childrens movement and
learning ability. Moreover, learning to manage
their muscles gives children feelings of control, a
sense of mastery and promotes self-esteem.
CHAPTER 2
Television robs children of time spent in
movement. US research proves that depriving
children of healthy physical movement causes
various stuntings of the body (such as skeletal
deformation and muscular atrophy), damage to
the nervous system and devastating weakening
of visual memory that disturbs perceptive ability
and greatly impairs learning ability.177 Besides,
physical exercise is health-promoting at all ages.
The reasons are many; one is the beneficial effect
of deep breathing, one consequence of which is
the better flushing of cerebrospinal fluid over the
brain.178
Weakening and paralysis of the will
is a characteristic of all addictive drugs;
TV-damaged children show it by their lack of
interest, motivation and initiative. They are
bored, learning-disabled and play-disabled. The
inappropriate passivity of children watching
television leads them to shirk accepting
responsibility. Watching television causes
progressive weakening of the creative will so
that initiative declines and the child is unable
to entertain him/herself by independent,
imaginative play. Research shows that children are
slower and less able to respond to an emergency
after watching television.
People are 75% less physically active
now than in 1900,179 and obesity has risen
phenomenally. Children need plenty of natural
play outdoors, with children of all ages, with
sufficient supervision by a nonintrusive adult
to prevent harm. Playing naturally (without
adult organisation), children develop visual and
auditory attention, body coordination and the
motor-control centres of the brain180 and are then
able to profit from academic learning in school
at an appropriate age. Additionally, physical
movement helps children develop an internal
sense of beat that seems to be related to reading
and math abilities.181 Play leads to the later ability
to play with ideas and think creatively,182 and its
importance cannot be overemphasised. As Froebel
said, Play is the highest expression of human
development in childhood.
44
(R) Childrens hand development hindered
and they lack touch experiences
A childs hands have the potential to move in
limitless ways in practical capacities using tools,
expressing feelings and following creative pursuits.
The most spiritual part of us, freely giving, the
hands enable us to be truly human. By contrast
the movements mainly pressing buttons on
keyboards, joysticks, electronic games and mobile
phones could be termed monkey movements
they are so simple and repetitive a trained monkey
could do them. Worse still, whilst watching
television the hands do nothing. If a childs ability
with his/her hands is not waxing it is waning.
Psychologists and teachers report that modern
children are increasingly touch-starved, that
is, lacking touch experiences. This may result
from their having less direct, sensory experience
because of time not lived fully but watching
television and also from the manipulation of
physiological arousal mechanisms (such as
flight or fight) that separate brain and body.183
(Whilst watching television the viewer neither
fights nor flees.) One effect of the overstimulation
of watching television is to remove, as it were, a
layer of protection around the child, leaving him
insecure, vulnerable and oversensitive. He may
well respond aggressively to minimal provocation,
such as when another child brushes past, he lashes
out, feeling that he himself was hit.
(S) Sleep
In an environment of sensory deprivation,
a person becomes more conscious of the life
sense; he hears blood rushing and other sounds;
prolonged it is torture and drives him crazy.
Conversely, overstimulation of the senses makes
someone less conscious of the life sense so that,
for example, becoming tired can go unnoticed; in
this way TV viewers are more tempted to stay up
late at night watching because they do not realise
how tired they are. In fact children and adults
now sleep less because they stay awake to watch
television or sit at the computer. The proportion
of car accidents due to tiredness is now estimated
in the UK to be 40%. Canadian research shows

adolescents sleep 20% less than they did 40 years
before. It is not uncommon for children to fall
asleep in class in the mornings. Additionally, sleep
is delayed and less tranquil as a result of watching
television. US research on nearly 500 children
ages 48 years old showed that after watching
television 40% had problems getting to sleep
and others woke in the night.184 Television causes
nervousness and fear of the dark, so that many
children now need a nightlight on all night; yet
hormone production and eye development need
seven hours of complete darkness.
How well or not we feel depends partly on
our getting adequate rest and sleep. During sleep
the life forces of the physical body bring about
growth, repair, healing and replenishment; in
addition the absent soul and spirit bring back
revitalising cosmic forces just before waking.
The prevailing, materialistic mindset denies the
sanctity of sleep.
(T) Young children need a god
All problems of the will, for example anorexia
and bulimia, are religious problems. Deep down
the wish not to live and fully enter this world
comes from the lack of a spiritual dimension that
gives meaning to life, making it understandable
and worthwhile. It is comforting to know that
whatever happens there is someone above loving
and caring about you. Sadly, anorexia is now
occurring in children as young as six years of age.
Small children need religion; they need
something to worship and will find it come what
may. Often the television is effectively the childs
temple experience on which (s)he sees his/her
heros latest exploits. If neither a religion nor a
spiritual dimension is provided by the parents or
the school, (s)he will look up to such figures as
Barbie or the person in the poster above his/her
bed. For the young child almost any religion is
better than none.
(U) Television shatters family life
Family ties are weakened as the family sits
passively in a line, their attention elsewhere,
rather than, say, in a circle around a game or the
45
What Children Receive Sensory Damage
meal table, communicating. Television displaces
quality time together engaged in conversation
and all kinds of interactive activities such as
playing games, storytelling and going on outings,
all of which give children the positive attention
they need.185 Family time can satisfy the child
physically, mentally and emotionally. Family
activities can involve what television does not
using peripheral as well as focussed vision,
practising both gross and fine motor skills, using
all the senses, asking questions and practising
communication, being challenged, solving
problems, exercising initiative and imagination,
being creative and constructive, feeling motivated,
feeling satisfied with ones achievements186 and
feeling loved. In one survey 10-year-old German
children were asked what they would most like to
have for Christmas; 80% of them replied: that
my parents spend more time with me.
Beyond the family the social fabric of
communities is also considered to have been
ruptured by television.
Treatment for TV-damaged children
Clearly parents need help to understand the
problem and then curtail or preferably stop the
childs viewing, substituting appropriate activities.
In the US there are clinics for such children. In
Waldorf kindergartens teachers have found that
what helps these children are real work activities
such as grinding grain, churning butter, sawing
wood, scrubbing, cleaning and so on, which they
do at school and which develop a healthy will.
Besides this, all children need beautiful sense
experiences, and these they get from artistic
activities such as watercolour painting, beeswax
modelling and watching an artistic puppet show.
Some kindergarten teachers have watercolour
painting several days a week for some weeks to
give a stronger healing experience.187
Giving up the TV habit
It falls primarily to teachers to inform parents
of the effects of watching television. The basic
message could be: Your children may be watching
too much television, which may be preventing
CHAPTER 2
them from reaching their full social and
intellectual potential.188 Television contributes to
the rising tide of intellectual mediocrity.189 In the
US a media awareness campaign called Home
Together supports teachers and parents in
cutting down on viewing. Several countries have
an annual TV Turnoff Day. Schools in the US
that organise a TV-turnoff week have found that
families that go without television for one week
watch less television ever after.
Sense disorders in adulthood,
implications for society
According to Steiner the moving picture
weaves materialism into peoples perceptual habits
and mechanises the soul-spiritual constitution.
A healthy development of all twelve senses is
important for several reasons, not least to avoid
the disorders of sense perception seen in adults
today. One danger to the senses involves morality,
where greed and addiction are the extreme result
of the senses tempting to indulgence (for example,
in food, drink, sex, foreign travel or luxurious
living), to egotism and to excessive attachment to
worldly pleasures. It manifests in the economic
growth of rich countries and in excessive
consumption. Addiction can be defined as the
enslavement to appetites and sensations which
have got out of hand so that a person becomes
dependent and ill.190 Advertising via the television
is an obvious target for blame.
Now that the play motif for adults is
downgraded and missing for all but a few, life
has lost its zest. Bungee-jumping (that besides
ignores the delicate, exquisite sophistication of the
human body) is just one of the ever more thrilling
recreations and amusements created to try to
put spice back into life by means of sensation.
Exotic adventure holidays are another example.
However, it is not really thrills we desire, but fun;
not really escape, but buoyancy.191
A proper development of the senses enables
a healthy waking consciousness, a coming to
our senses. Alienation is the opposite, a dreamy
wakefulness and lack of being grounded and
centred, an inner loneliness and isolation, a
46
lack of trust in others and a sense of being out
of touch with the world.192 Alienation has much
increased in recent years and points to sensory
damage and/or deprivation. Television and
computers are blamed.
With the evolutionary development of the
nervous system and brain, sense experiences have
grown ever paler. The senses are deadened and
will become more so. To a lesser and lesser degree
people can perceive subtle nuances of colour. As
the colour-sense becomes ever more blunted, there
is a danger of its being lost in the future.
A second danger to the senses stems from
modern technology. Wonderful in its way, it
assaults the sense-organisation. The cognitive and
will senses are particularly affected by the media,
irrespective of content. (In any case poor content
damages the soul, not the senses.) Two further
examples are illuminated advertisements that
weaken the eye and the noise of engines, such as
traffic, that weakens the hearing.193 Pollution of
the senses is a concept hardly recognised yet.
Steiner points out that one condition for real
culture is the healthy application and development
of the four upper, cognitive senses.194 He says of
the six upper senses that they furnish experiences
which nourish the spiritual life, if there is a
spiritual life within the soul.195 He points out
that these six senses formed the foundation of
the old oriental culture, whereas Western culture
is essentially founded on the six lower senses.
(The four will senses perceive all that can be
determined by number, measure and weight,
which is the basis of science and mathematics.)
Yet we will not be able to live in a human way
with the one-sided culture of the lower sense-
man.196 Modern science and philosophy consider
the feelings subjective and the upper sense realm
one of belief and not of knowledge, so an empty,
manipulative knowledge has arisen working with
the laws of nature but empty of moral laws.197
Thus the modern, body-centred, materialistic
society, where the rich get richer and the poor
poorer, is to be expected, as are a lack of moral
standards, emotional security and meaning in life.
It is not surprising that so many young people feel
enervated.
 Chapter 3.
Puppetry and How It Can Heal
Sensory Damage
How Puppetry Affects the Childs Senses
We obtain essential nourishment from three
sources. Food and water provide the coarsest
and most physically obvious kind. Secondly, air
provides the finer nourishment of oxygen. Thirdly
a still finer, sense nourishment reaches us as the
distinct sensations of smell, taste, colour, sound,
warmth, movement and so on. Each sensation is
differentiated as a range and provides entry to a
different realm of experience. The nourishment
from the senses feeds the soul, the inner life, and
provides content for our thoughts, sensations
for our feelings, an essential support for our
actions.198 The healthy daytime consciousness
of children, as well as their healthy growth and
development, is thus determined by the quality
of sense nourishment in their surroundings.
A consideration follows of the quality of sense
nourishment brought by puppetry as performed in
Waldorf schools.
All senses need interest. Puppetry raises
interest so that senses dulled by television
and plastic toys can bristle and perk up again.
Children react instinctively to receive the
nourishment they need; as a puppet show begins
the group is hushed, their bodies stilled with
attention transfixed. First a beeswax candle is
lit, its effect is as if to cast a spell on those in the
room; its fragrance has a calming effect on the
children. Simple, pentatonic music in delightful,
spiritual tones is played as a silk veil covering
the stage is lifted to reveal a setting draped with
plant-dyed silks. The props, scenery and puppets
themselves lack angularity (such as a wooden
Pinocchio would have), the better to show the
world where the action takes place and not to
inhibit the flow of thought as can happen when
the eye reaches a right angle (square corner).
47
The characters are depicted truthfully in a
wholesome form without exaggeration or
caricature. All are made of materials that were
once alive and are therefore life-enhancing.
The movements made on stage are smooth,
flowing and graceful. They often consist of curves
such as an S-shaped journey or a dance in a
circle, and birds flying may make a lemniscate.
Puppets do not jump up onto the stage but make
smooth, horizontal entrances and exits. Graceful
movement is mirrored in the childrens later
physical activity and has an inwardly harmonizing,
physiological effect. Steiner said the experience for
the child of the movement of the puppets is like
that of eurythmy, that the puppets do eurythmy.
A child spends most of the time surrounded
with the trappings of modern life that suit adults,
but puppet shows address a child at his/her
level, with pentatonic music appropriate for his/
her stage of consciousness, living as (s)he is in
pictorial imagination. The musical tones should
come from the same source as the fairy tale, so
the instruments are chosen accordingly. The
kinderharp calms the nerves, chimes or a metal
xylophone resound with a pure, bell-like quality
and the pipe/recorder, the shepherds instrument
from long ago, seems distantly familiar. Music
in the mood of the fifth begins and ends on A,
the childs home tone (see Appendix). It does
not culminate in a resolution but is open-ended,
leaving the child free to continue in his dream-like
consciousness. Music for a journey or wandering is
an improvised succession of pentatonic tones (they
cannot clash). Songs have simple, pleasant, light
tunes in the tone range of the child. Children
often come out of a puppet show singing one of
the songs.
CHAPTER 3
The healing power of colour is increasingly
recognized today. Ordinary, mineral-based colours
create a barrier to the depth of vision of the eye,
causing something to be pushed back, so there is
a hardening and consolidating in the child. The
plant-based colours used to dye the puppet fabrics
and silk scenery have a translucence which does
not block the eye. Being natural, the colours are
life-enhancing and cannot clash but are pleasing,
restful and satisfying to the eye. Ideally, artificial
lighting is avoided by using a sunlit-flooded area
so that the richness of the colours can best be
seen. Otherwise full-spectrum artificial lighting
is the next best alternative. A puppets colours
are chosen to show an aspect of the inner soul
qualities, the moral intention of the character and
so are truthful and educate the moral qualities of
the child.
Puppet shows usually enact one of the genuine
fairy tales, as they provide the most concentrated
soul nourishment. Beautiful, precise language
is a hallmark of such fairy tales rather than
unrefined, everyday language. For example, the
word concealed would be used rather than
hidden, commanded rather than ordered
and affliction rather than trouble. The
language reflects the childs stage of consciousness
in paying scant attention to the feelings and the
thinking behind the action and emphasizing the
action itself. The living forces in the live speech
of the narrator are ensouled by the puppeteer in
the puppets. Language can be confrontational and
accelerate the process of self-integration; it can
cause a consciousness of self which sooner or later
can result in one of several symptoms of insecurity
(insecurity because of prematurity). The narrator
does not try to impress the children directly, to
excite or frighten them, but instead speaks out
in a level voice almost as if calmly addressing the
empty space just above the childrens heads.
The consciousness of the protagonist reflects
that of the watching children; (s)he is nave and
does not smell a rat but walks straight into
a predicament. Neither does (s)he show good
or poor taste. The senses of smell and taste are
understressed with the emphasis on action, the
will, to which young children can immediately
relate.
Warmth is expressed through the caring
character and warm colours of the parent puppets,
the joyful songs and the sources of help. There is
besides a soul-satisfying warmth that is felt when
all is well in the end.
The childs moral development begins with
gratitude, the basic virtue developed up to the
change of teeth. From gratitude, the activating
impulse of love can be developed between the
seventh and fourteenth years. Then, from out
of what has been experienced with love, the
impulse of duty199 can develop over the next
seven years. Gratitude is encouraged by imitation
of the grateful gestures of the adults around. It
is fundamentally gratitude towards the cosmic
powers for life and a place in this world. It goes
hand in hand with reverence. Puppet shows are
performed reverently and subtly instill in children
a gratitude and reverence for life. A grateful
attitude can lead to awareness of meaning in life.
Puppet shows can be magical, and by endowing
things with magic, enchantment is the means of
access to sacredness.200
The scenery and characters are deliberately
depicted somewhat vaguely. The puppets usually
have blank faces without features, and a tree may
well be just a cardboard cone draped with green
silk. This way as much as possible is left to the
childs developing imagination. Eye contact can
hinder the inner activity of picture-making. The
puppeteers focus completely on the puppets and
on the action on stage, the narrator too watches
the action on stage and may simply cast a casual
sweeping glance over the audience occasionally.
Similarly any recording by photograph or video
would be disturbing so it is not allowed. Besides,
video recording would cancel the enchantment
and substitute entertainment.
For children up to age 8 the strings of
marionettes are clearly visible so that their
control does not appear to be by magic. The
fact of their being controlled from above subtly
conveys the idea of the existence of the spiritual
dimension and of control by a spiritual being. It
48

acknowledges what children may vaguely know
and experience but probably do not talk about.
As the children sit open-mouthed, drinking it all
in, they can absorb the positive qualities of the
hero(ine) and look up to him/her with admiration
and awe. In todays push-button culture it is
good for children to experience ego-endowed,
alive human beings causing the performance
even though the children appear not to notice
the puppeteers, their attention instead riveted
and wonder written on their faces. The ancient
Greeks said that all human inquiry must proceed
from wonder or, rephrased, all knowledge must
have wonder for its seed.201 Nurturing the childs
ability to experience wonder lays the foundations
for his spirituality as an adult.202 The expressions
of the children in the photograph on page 51
show wonder and much more besides.
How puppetry affects the childs
breathing
The purpose of all teaching should be
the education of the breathing of the child.
Steiner here meant both the breathing of the
physical body and an inner breathing of the
soul. Rhythm (as described on page 8) enables
a proper breathing of body and soul. It is also
important for the development of the etheric
body and brings security and stability at all ages.
The physical breathing with related movement
of the ribcage causes a rhythmic flushing of
cerebrospinal fluid from the spine up over the
brain. This action partly explains why walking is
such a stimulus to the imagination. In Japanese-
owned factories workers do physical exercises
every half-hour to keep their minds alert.
Traditional Chinese medicine, Tibetan medicine
and Craniosacral therapy all consider that the
cerebrospinal fluid is the seat of the vital life force
which orders and integrates all cellular and tissue
function, maintaining health and healing.203
Some activities such as academic work
make the child concentrate, focus and contract.
The body is largely passive with small muscle
movements at most, and the ego incarnates
strongly. One result is quick, shallow breathing
49
Puppetry and How It Can Heal Sensory Damage
in the uppermost part of the lungs, almost as
if the breath is held, trapped. Thus Waldorf
teachers term such activities in-breathing
activities. Too much of such concentrated work
causes complexions to pale, learning ability to
diminish, discipline problems to increase, asthma
promoted, and the children become jaded yet
bursting to compensate with movement. An
adult example would be a concert audience where
the instruments have been tuned to A at 444,
creating extra tension and excitement without a
release. The opposite pole is expansive activity
(such as free play) which in excess causes a lack
of groundedness or centredness, with likely wild,
uncontrolled behaviour because the ego is loose
so the child cannot give will and direction to
his/her actions.
It is a fundamental rule of balanced teaching
that children be given the alternation they need
between these two opposite poles. Teachers
variously term these poles contracting and
expansive, passive and active, thought work
and doing work, academic work and free play/
artistic activities, in-breathing and out-breathing,
or even incarnating and excarnating (referring
to the ego). Waldorf grades teachers use poems,
songs, rhythmic exercises and games of a few
minutes each sprinkled through their lessons to
bring a balance and lighten the mood so that the
lesson breathes properly. In the kindergarten
the main out-breathing activity is creative free
play, apart from singing, painting and tidy-up
time. (Snacktime is half in-breathing, half out-
breathing.)
Kindergarten in-breathing activities are story-
time, circle-time, eurythmy, speaking, music,
beeswax modelling, bread-making, handwork
and watching a puppet show. (Note that
in-breathing activities do not necessarily involve
physical passivity.) Nevertheless within each of
these activities should be some breathing or
oscillation between the poles. For example, circle-
time should have a balanced mix of speaking
and singing, and a puppet show should have
lighter moments that release tension. Indeed,
it is most important that every puppet show
CHAPTER 3
have an element of surprise. As the children
laugh or exclaim, there is a lightening, a release.
Laughter empties the lungs well; then a deeper
breath is taken. It also loosens the astral body
or soul making it more mobile. Steiner said that
children need to laugh deeply at least once a day.
Some would argue that middle-class children in
particular do not laugh enough.
There is an intimate connection between the
breathing and the blood circulation as reflected
in the 4:1 ratio of pulse to breaths. Puppetry
therefore affects the blood circulation via the
breathing as well as through the emotions and
by the refreshing, enlivening, inner activity it
creates. Puppetry brings a beneficial effect to the
whole rhythmic system of breathing and blood
circulation, that is, to the middle realm of feeling.
From ages 7 to 14 it is the four middle senses
that are particularly ready for development. The
central theme of in- and out-breathing of the
soul, learning to breathe in inner contraction
and expansion, in sympathy and antipathy, must
be considered in order to develop those senses
of the middle realm. Waldorf education seeks to
educate not only physical breathing but also inner
soul-breathing. Where there is balance lies the
potential for freedom.204
The Psychological Benefits to Children
of Fairy Tales
Puppet shows in Waldorf schools usually
portray a genuine fairy tale such as one collected
by the Brothers Grimm. Such fairy tales come
from a very deep source, the same wellspring as
poetry, and reflect psychological and spiritual
truths. They have implications for the whole
sweep of ones life and for humanity. They are
tales of initiation and illustrate the evolution of
human consciousness.
Fairy tales, like Shakespearean plays, can
be appreciated on many levels. The fairy tales
speak simultaneously to all levels of a person
including the subconscious. Young children take
them literally on an objective level and have no
problem with a frog turning into a prince or a
princess who sleeps for a hundred years. At the
50
same time they make an enormous contribution
to the inner growth of the child205 and give a
sense of security everything is fine in the end.
The tales address childrens unconscious fears, for
surely nothing could happen to a child in real
life as bad as that which happens in the fairy
tales where problems such as losing ones parents,
growing old, death, being buried alive and a host
of evils are confronted. Yet in the tales a person
of goodwill always overcomes these problems and
triumphs in the end. How very reassuring for the
child! (S)he is certain to be all right.
Contrary to most childrens literature, evil
as well as good is ever-present in the fairy tales,
as it is in life and in each of us. Each of us is
sometimes clever, sometimes stupid, sometimes
industrious, sometimes lazy, sometimes beautiful,
sometimes ugly, sometimes good, sometimes bad
and so on. (The child too can be conscious of this
ambivalence, for example, when he obeys whilst
wishing not to.) Whereas we have the polarities
within us, the fairy tale portrays each aspect of
us as a separate character, thus rendering our
ambivalence in an objective, simplified fashion
understandable to children. Fairy tales enable
children to differentiate (not consciously in
concepts but in their normal state of dreamlike,
experiential consciousness) between good and
evil, selfishness and unselfishness, love and hate
and so on. The fairy tales give the child the idea,
Im O.K., I have all these positive and negative
qualities, theyre all part of me and Im O.K.; thus
the child can be honest with himself instead of
hiding some aspects and needing to work them
out later in adulthood.
The fairy tale shows that if one finds true
adult love, a truly satisfying bond to another
person, this is the ultimate in emotional security
and permanence of relation; besides addressing
the childs separation anxiety, it can transcend the
fear of death.
Consider the further, unconscious fears that
fairy tales address and the reassuring spiritual
truths to be learned from them. Fairy tales
prepare the childs unconscious resolve for
whatever difficulties (s)he will certainly meet
 Puppetry and How It Can Heal Sensory Damage

with the assurance that there is a path through should intuit what he is asking of us; then we can
these problems, there will be guidance on that provide the fairy tale he needs so that he will feel
path and by meeting them resolutely (s)he will understood and appreciated deep down in his
be victorious in the end. In other words, they feelings, hopes and anxieties.208 Clearly fairy tales
develop resolve, inner strength to meet the world satisfy a deep psychological and spiritual need.
and trust in the universe, all of which lay the Witness the sigh of well-being and satisfaction
foundations for wisdom. A struggle against severe from a child when he has had a good spiritual
difficulties in life is unavoidable, but by meeting meal in the form of a fairy tale.209 The young
them steadfastly we will overcome them and at the child up to age 7 has a great need to experience
end emerge victorious. When someone good in
206
reverence and gratitude; this happens when they
heart is hungry and unable to get food, somehow listen to a fairy tale that opens the door of wonder
food comes. When there is an insurmountable in their souls.
problem and all attempts to overcome it fail, no To overcome the psychological problems
one good in heart dies, but from somewhere help of living and of growing up, the child needs to
comes. When someone is unloved and isolated, create daydreams that may or may not be acted
from somewhere love comes, comforts and makes out in play. Thus the childs unconscious is not
the world right. When evil is encountered, good repressed but given vent in the story elements that
triumphs, the wrongdoer is punished and all are ruminated over, rearranged and fantasised
ends well. Whatever happens, one can succeed. about in his daydreams. This way the child is able
It is possible to be blessed with pure joy. Change, to bring sense, order and even calm to his mind,
development and metamorphosis can be amazing. and at least some future problems are avoided.
Nothing is impossible. Put simply whatever the Fairy tales help children to find meaning in life.210
problem, guidance and help come to someone of Fairy tales create an unending stream of mental
goodwill. They enable children to live in trust in pictures; indeed the folk [fairy] tale is the primer
the ever-present help of the spiritual world. Of the of the picture language of the soul.211 They
whole range of childrens literature, fairy tales are develop the intellect, arouse curiosity and provide
found by children to be more satisfying than all a wealth of new ideas, an enriched vocabulary, a
other childrens stories. 207
tremendous stimulation to the childs imagination
The young child cannot
tell us what he needs because
he lives completely in the
world around him/her in a
dream consciousness, an
unselfconscious participation
and identification with all
aspects of nature, the weather
and everything and everyone
around him/her. As Tolstoy
said, Until the age of five, I
did not look on nature. I was
nature. To know what a child
needs, we need to read the
child (from the way he moves,
speaks, eats, holds himself,
gazes, makes friends, from
what he does, etc.). That is, we Illustration 4. Children at a puppet theatre 213

51
CHAPTER 3

and an unlimited source of material for his
daydreams and his play. Certainly it is not solely
at a mechanistic level that his play is enhanced.
Whilst the tales are particularly appropriate for
ages 4 through 9, older children and adults also
find great meaning in them. Like the legendary
chalice of the Holy Grail, the fairy tale gives to
each what he needs.
In addition, the fairy tales teach morality.
They do so not only because they show that good
triumphs in the end, the wrongdoer is punished
and crime does not pay, but because the child is
attracted to and identifies with the good hero(ine)
who undertakes an exciting, hazardous journey
and inspiringly wins through in the end.212 The
good hero(ine) is the childs model for imitation.
In contrast, the cautionary tales preach morality,
each clearly conveying a specific moral lesson, and
so are appropriate for older children, particularly
ages 7 through 9.

Tabletop puppets pose after depicting a Persian folk tale.

Silk marionettes perform a fairy tale.

52
 Conclusion
Artistic activity, whether active or passive,
vivifies the senses and ensouls the life-processes.
The arts can be said to have the special mission of
keeping the senses healthy in spite of the damage
of modern technology.214 Puppetry stimulates
fantasy, whose creative form-giving power is a soul
force intertwined completely with the forces of
growth in the first seven years of life. That power
of fantasy comes from the senses, the childs only
source of learning and knowing.
That modern civilization is inimical to
children is beyond doubt. There is a daily
bombardment of the fragile, developing senses by
which the child experiences the world and with
his/her inner pictures tries to make sense of it.
In the early years whatever sense impressions are
around the child are absorbed inexorably and
permeate the entire body. The relentless invasion
of the body by a stream of sense impressions
inappropriate to his delicate, physiological state
can permanently impair the development of the
sense organs and the internal organs, making
them dull and passive and leading to illness
later in life. These strong, inappropriate sense
impressions increase the childs stress load and
cause learning and behavioural problems and
hyperactivity. Furthermore, they accelerate
physical (sexual) development whilst delaying
emotional (soul) development. (For example,
children are less able to delay gratification and
have lower self-esteem, less self-confidence and less
initiative).
A technological instrument such as the
television in daily use weakens the life forces at the
time of watching by the images formed from rapid
light movements, by negating the three dimensions
of space that give us awareness of self as ego in a
physical body and by its twice-duplicated sound
which destroys the delicate harmonies sounding
53
in the etheric body.215 In addition, television
is damaging to childrens health and, like all
addictions, paralyses the will. To be able to use
any of the senses, we must want to observe, hear,
etc., but television reduces interest. Indeed it
provides a kind of training in not reacting, in not
responding, so that the modern generation of
children appears to have been anaesthetised and
to lack the enterprising dynamism that should
characterise childhood. Entertainment is the
means of distancing ourselves from sacredness,
yet young children need a god. However, by
endowing things with magic, enchantment is the
means of access to sacredness,216 and as puppet
shows can be endowed with magic, they can
compensate to some extent.
Food nourishes the body and sense
experiences nourish the brain and central nervous
system. They are all grist for the mill, enabling
pathways and connections to be made as the child
digests and makes sense of the world around him,
particularly through play. From experiences he
develops concepts and thereby can pay attention
because he can make sense of what people say;
(s)he builds up a vocabulary of experience, of
human activities and speech and gets a picture of
what it is to be human. Time lost from play in this
period is lost for good.
There are critical periods in brain develop-
ment when experiences must occur while the
brain is most open (04 years) and before the area
is myelinated; otherwise that area of the brain
may never be able to function normally.217 Thus
watching television during the first four years
could cause one or more critical periods to be
missed and so permanent impairment result.
Children experience sense impressions
differently at the various stages of development.
Birth to age 7 is the most sensitive period when
CHAPTER 3
the whole child is like a sponge, soaking up sense
impressions. Profound differences in the structure
of the brain have been shown depending on what
was taken in by the senses.218 Watching television
in that first period contributes greatly to a higher
proportion of children with learning disabilities
and hyperactivity. Television works against the
gradual building up of a childs own view of
the world; it provides images and fragments of
information at great speed and without continuity
or context, so they cannot be incorporated or
remembered later.
A child naturally moves from morning till
night unless he is sickening for something. The
passivity of the television-watching child is totally
abnormal with a negative effect on all bodily
processes and on the growth and development of
the organs, including the brain. The younger the
child, the greater the damage.
The senses are the childs only means of
knowing and learning. It follows that the quality
of sense impressions the young child absorbs is
of paramount importance for his/her physical
and mental health, growth and development
and learning. The younger the child, the more
important is that quality, for the greater is his/her
sensitivity and his/her physiological response to
sense impressions.
A puppet show can provide a unified sense
experience of high quality, giving a nourishment
that modern children so badly need and that to
some extent can negate the deleterious effects
of overstimulation from modern technology. It
is a meaningful wholeness in three dimensions.
It strengthens the etheric formative forces in
the child, which serve the organs growth and
development and their harmonious functioning.
It gives joy, pleasure and satisfaction and has a
certain magic with which each child can enter
his/her own world of creative imagination.
Rich impulses for play result. The child takes
in unconsciously the fact that the puppets in a
fairy tale are archetypal human characters. Such
54
tales give the feeling deep down that, throughout
life, we are each a developing being, struggling,
in metamorphosis, and that whatever adversity
arises, whoever is honest and good will succeed.
Not only does puppetry provide an antidote
and healing for children exposed to the stresses
of modern life and the visual media in particular,
it also helps to better prepare them for life and to
solve the problems of the world ahead. Egotism
encouraged by the media and by increased
materialism since World War II pushes back
collective responsibility. Puppet shows discourage
egotism because children identify with the
protagonists who succeed only if unselfish and
humble. The watching children may grow into
more socially responsible citizens.
Arguably the worst problem today is that
the visual media bombard children with other
peoples images, so depriving them of their image-
making powers and limiting their ability to have
a world of their own. Yet the image in thinking is
all-important. To develop imagination and educate
the feeling-intellect and emotional rationality,
growing children need an environment rich in
sensory experiences of high quality. Puppetry
provides these generously and condensed into
a few minutes. It helps to fulfill the highly
important educational task of developing strong,
self-directed, image-making powers. Einstein said
that problems cannot be solved with the same
kind of thinking that created them. Puppetry
helps provide the rich source in early development
on which later creative imagination depends. It is
divergent thinking creative, imaginative, flexible
and, above all, lively on which there will be ever
greater call to solve the worlds problems.
Surely the ultimate proof of the healing value
of puppetry is evident in one particular example.
Staff in psychiatric hospitals and troubled state
schools have commented after a Waldorf silk
marionette show that there is a stillness and
attention in the audience that had never been
seen before.
 Conclusion

The King of the Ants leads his colony.

The Queen Bee leads her swarm.

55

Part B. The Practise
Chapter 4.
The Genuine Fairy Tale
Origin
Mankinds knowledge of the spiritual
world, of creation, and of the meaning of the
earth, of fate and lifes task was imprinted by the
ancient mysteries219 from initiates experience
on the astral and higher planes,220 from the
imaginations of mythology and from the
inspirations of religious traditions. The fairy tales
are the remains of those mystery languages.221
The great myths of the gods can be understood
when we realise the huge, comprehensive
circumstances of the cosmos underlying them.
Fairy tales can be understood when we realise
that the different happenings and pictures are
simply the repetition of astral events.222 Put
another way, the fairy tales show the history of
humanity as a development and metamorphosis of
consciousness.223
Definition of a fairy tale
A fairy tale is defined as a wonder tale
involving marvellous elements and occurrences,
although not necessarily about fairies. Indeed,
fairies rarely appear. The name arises because
they involve the world of faerie, the elemental,
supernatural world. A fairy tale is enchanting
and full of wonder, bringing delight to children
without their quite knowing why. It is neither
fiction nor nonfiction. It is not fantasy derived
from folk imaginations. It has been suggested that
the greatest evil of modern times is literalness
taking things at face value, considering the
superficial, shallow, outer appearance and
ignoring what lies behind and within. Fairy tales
have fallen victim to this literalness because
they are not true in a literal, physical sense.
56
However, the fairy tale can instead be called
truer than true because it reflects psychological
and spiritual truths. It shows these in a simple,
pictorial way that can be understood by both
adults and (unconsciously) children. Some see in it
a symbolic rendering of crucial life experiences,224
but it is not symbolic it originated long before
symbolism; only with the help of spiritual science
can one reach beyond symbolism towards its
vast significance. It concerns archetypes and
imaginations. It pictures our most profound
experiences of soul, resonating deeply where it
speaks to something we already know. It echoes
our inner soul processes. It does not have
meaning, it awakens meaning.
What may pass as a modern fairy tale lacks
the all-important, genuine essence and contains
a surfeit of sentimentality. The main, or only,
recent writers of genuine fairy tales are Goethe
(17491832) and Novalis (17721801), both people
with the spiritual insight to reach the depths from
which the tales flow. Novalis described fairy tales
as the primary and highest poetical creation of
man.225 Goethe, to reveal his most profound
perception of the subconscious roots of human
soul life, used only the language of the fairy tale;
the Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful
Lily was the result.226
A true fairy tale is like a living organism:
The sequence of images unfolds with the same
obedience to law as a plant grows from a seed to
develop leaf and blossom and fruit.227 Genuine
fairy tales, such as were collected by the German
Brothers Grimm, have much action. They
are characterised by a wonderful and elegant
simplicity with no unnecessary description, no

sentimentality, no flowery cuteness. With few
adjectives but many verbs, they are filled with
action so like the young child who is very active
in his will but does not yet have personalised
feelings. Typical are the words from Cinderella
(after her mothers death): Every day she went
out to her mothers grave and wept. Fairy tales
contain much dialogue that enlivens the story;
children grow and develop through stories told
with direct speech, whereas their attention
wanders during indirect speech.
Great art results when what is most
difficult to understand is put in the most clearly
perceptible form.228 Fairy tales and poetry arise
from the same source, more profound than that
of other works of art.229 A Greek tragedy, for
example, presents one individual at a certain time
of life in a particular difficulty, one individual
with his unique destiny. Only a particular,
circumscribed sphere of life,230 it appeals to
our intellect and our sympathy; we suffer with
the hero. The effect of a fairy tale, on the other
hand, is spontaneous, elementary, archetypal and
unconscious; it is universal, addressing all ages in
all cultures. Every character, even animal, reflects
something deep inside us,231 so we identify with
every character. In each of us is something of the
king, something of the stepmother (materialism),
even something of the wicked witch.
The fairy tales are a language of the human
soul and spirit that speaks to all people.
Cinderella, a tale collected by the Brothers
Grimm, has been found to exist in 234 versions
throughout the world. They arose about the same
time, they all have the same underlying themes,
simply the cultural details differ.
The most significant fairy tales have been
proven older than the traditional European
sagas.232 There was no need for fairy tales when
all people had a primeval, atavistic clairvoyance
and so had astral experiences. As this ability
was gradually lost, those astral experiences were
expressed as fairy tales. The first to tell fairy tales
were priestesses, priests, seers and initiates in
pre-Christian times. As time went by, they were
passed down from one to another.
57
The Genuine Fairy Tale
The Brothers Grimm (born 1785 and 1786)
collected their tales mainly first-hand, from those
who still had a direct connection to the spiritual
world and could relate what they saw as their
own astral experiences. In other cases they had to
collect many versions of a single tale and delicately
and systematically bring them together without
altering basic points or giving embellishment.
Besides this, they studied medieval manuscripts.
Always they worked with the utmost care and
attention to the original details. Other collectors
such as Perrault, La Fontaine and Giambattista
Basile, did not have first-hand sources and in
addition took considerable liberties with the tales,
so their results are much altered and less genuine.
In the late Middle Ages and early part of our
modern epoch, the initiates of certain occult
groups such as the Templars and Rosicrucians
wrote down fairy tales as a means of preparing
future humanity for the battles to come. Most or
all of Grimms tales were carefully collected by
the brotherhood of Christian Rosenkreutz. They
realised that these tales were accurate pictures of
human soul life and of human physiology. They
saw that these brilliant word-pictures portrayed
accurate events.
Explanation of fairy tales
After children hear a fairy tale, it should
be allowed to resonate in their souls with no
interpretation whatsoever, nor questions later.
Analysis by adults needs an awareness that
dissection of a work of art can kill it dead;
mindful of its delicate and sublime nature,
a certain gentle reverence is appropriate.
The fairy tales are signposts and difficult
riddles to solve. Study of their meaning can
help adults awaken to spiritual realities and so
be better prepared for the future when sooner
or later all will have threshold experiences. It is
a challenge to seek beyond symbolism for the
essential integrity of a fairy tale.
To unravel the meaning of a fairy tale only
anthroposophical wisdom can help, and even
then no one can reach the bottom of it there
is always someone elses fresh perspective to take
CHAPTER 4
one deeper still. For example, entombment and
subsequent release such as being shut in a cave
or coffin or swallowed by a wolf one person may
interpret as a death and return to life and perhaps
connect it to the death and resurrection at
Easter, while another is reminded of the Passover
followed by the freeing of the Jews. A third sees
in it a picture of winter followed by the coming to
life in spring, a fourth sees the soul engulfed by
evil forces, and a fifth sees an initiation process
reminiscent of Jonah and the whale and they
can all be right !
All fairy tales show the evolution of human
consciousness. Certain characters represent
former human stages of development. Giants,
for example, are remnants of our very distant
past, in the time of Atlantis. They are the
lumbering power of ignorance, strong and
stupid, representing humanity at the time when
each person was physically very strong, not yet
withdrawn from the forces of nature and not yet
able to use an intellectual soul.233 Constructive
wise women or sisters represent the next stage
in the evolution of human consciousness, the
stage when people had an intellectual soul but not
yet a consciousness soul. The modern stage (that
is, since 1413 ad*) of the developing consciousness
soul is characterised by shrewdness, the ability
to overcome rough strength by intellectual
cleverness. This stage is often represented by
a tailor, sometimes by a dwarf, who is a clever,
logical, critical, brave character who dissects and
rearranges and is interested in the physical world.
Some fairy tales show just a portion of human
history, but many encompass the entire sweep
from Paradise lost in the remote past to Paradise
regained in the far distant future. Thus they are
the story of the journey of the human soul, both
individually and collectively.
After the words, Once upon a time (that
is, in time immemorial) a fairy tale typically
begins with a king and queen living in a castle.
Someone may consider them as representing
*The date given by Rudolf Steiner from astronomical
calculations
58
mankind living in Paradise, our common wealthy
origin, whilst another sees in this our common
beginning in the spiritual world before we came
down to earth. The king and/or queen can also
be seen to represent the old way of doing things
which is no longer appropriate, so sooner or
later they usually step aside (by dying or handing
over the kingdom). They long for a child, or may
have several children, on the youngest of which
hinges the tale. This tiny baby, youngest child or
Thumbling (from Grimms fairy tales) represents
the newest human faculty that needs to grow and
develop, a new spiritual seed ego consciousness.
As already stated, all characters are an aspect
of one person, of any human being, each character
being archetypal. Some tales begin with a mother
figure who represents the divine world or the
feeling depths of the soul.234 A stepmother is the
earthly world or sense-bound knowledge and
may represent the hard forces of materialism.235
A widow is someone left desolate and sad,
abandoned by the divine powers and cut off from
the spiritual world.236 If the person making the
journey is of humble background, it simply means
a person whose parents have already fallen from
spiritual heights, a person already on the path of
the evolution of human consciousness.
The main character a prince, princess,
girl or boy either at puberty or around the age
of seven leaves or is forced out into the world,
innocent and ignorant. (S)he encounters a series
of problems which are always physical (such
as chopping wood, spinning straw into gold,
gathering thousands of hidden pearls in a single
day) but which develop the spiritual, so the
character learns, changes and matures. Finally
(s)he reaches a (second) castle, confident, knowing
and free, and a marriage takes place (in which can
be seen the union of soul and spirit), and then
they live happily ever after. The fairy tale has a
central theme of rebirth to a higher plane whereby
something dies (narrow selfhood) represented
by a king/queen/mother/father early in the tale
and something else (the higher self) is born.
This birth is implicit in the marriage at the end
of the tale that can be seen as the union of the

advanced soul (usually girl or princess) with the
advanced spirit (usually male, the boy or prince).
To gain the princess hand and become king at
the end means one has found ones higher self
or attained higher knowledge. The union of soul
and spirit means the human being is complete,
his entities harmonised; he has reached the end of
the evolution of his consciousness and thereby the
ultimate purpose of life. Thus all fairy tales are to
be interpreted in terms of the path of evolution of
human consciousness and as tales of initiation.
Many fairy tales finish with such words as the
marriage was solemnized and they lived happily
ever after or they were married and if they
have not died, they are still alive today. These
tales not only reflect the sequence of evolution
of human consciousness up to the stage reached
today, but continue into the far distant future.
Thus these tales are valid for perpetuity. After
many thousands of years of trials and tribulations
(reflected in the challenges met in the woods
or forest of the fairy tale), through the pain and
suffering of physical existence in several earthly
lives, we shall develop our higher self to the point
where the union (marriage in the fairy tale) of soul
and spirit can take place, and thus we will regain
Paradise (the castle and kingdom). In the future
through self-development and the transformation
of thinking, knowledge of the spiritual world will
be attained in full consciousness, and we will
thereby experience Paradise once more.
Often in a fairy tale there is a search for
a bride/bridegroom, for someone as close as
possible to the ideal, to perfection. Alone in
the physical world, it cannot be done, for with
ordinary consciousness the main character would
pass by the right person. In other words, as the
right bride cannot be found in the outer world,
one must turn to the inner world. Needed is the
guidance of the wise woman type of spiritual
being who lives a quiet, secluded life and is a
soul-shepherd who knows the secrets of the
forces guiding human beings to the spiritual
world and will awaken the deeper forces within
the seeker.237 Such a person may appear as a
hermit, a wise, old man or woman, or as a dwarf
59
The Genuine Fairy Tale
who may give the seeker a magical talisman. In
ordinary life we may have a decision to make and
we could easily err, but if we reconsider it each
night for three nights before falling asleep, then
first thing in the morning we may be able to bring
a wise answer back with us from that intermediate
state we were in just before waking. Just so in the
fairy tale; when normal waking consciousness
is inadequate, other states of consciousness are
needed. Where a magical talisman ostensibly
solves the problem(s), it is actually other state(s)
of consciousness (when the external senses are
silenced and thus the soul comes to life) which
call forth genuine vision.238
A different state of consciousness is often
shown by crossing to another realm. It may be
depicted by water crossing a river or entering
a lake or well suggesting the moon and night-
consciousness as opposed to day-consciousness.
In The Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces, a
soldier goes through a process of initiation in
order to cross a lake at night (that is, to penetrate
the world of sleep, the spiritual world, in full
waking consciousness); he brings back cosmic
knowledge to the earthly world and as an initiate
solves the riddle, so he is able to marry the
princess and inherit the kingdom.239 The hunger
of The Billy Goats Gruff is a spiritual hunger;
their crossing the bridge to where the grass is
greener means to cross over to the spiritual world,
which the young, innocent ones are still easily able
to do whereas the mature one needs to meet evil
and overcome it first.240
Often the seekers journey goes through a
forest. The forest can signify the spiritual world
and thus another state of consciousness. In Iron
Henry, the forest can be seen to represent a
border realm between the sense world and the
spiritual world, and finding the way through the
forest means finding the way to the spirit.241
Bewitchment is common in fairy tales. The
bewitched state represents the half-truth, that is,
only the physical aspect; once the spell is broken
the complete true being is revealed. A person or
thing will be bewitched until the seeker, through
the trials and other states of consciousness,
CHAPTER 4
reaches an advanced stage of inner development
and can then see the truth. The basis of the
realm of the fairy tale is the established belief
that everything around us is bewitched spiritual
truth and that we attain the truth when we break
the spell242 or, rather, when we attain the truth
the spell is broken. The Frog Prince is a good
example: The prince has been changed into a
frog, whom the princess does not recognise as her
own bewitched higher self; through the trials
the princess/soul can awaken and recognise its
higher self, so breaking the spell, and the gates to
the spiritual world open once more.243 In Snow-
White and Rose-Red, the prince (the higher self)
is bewitched as a bear until the girls who represent
thinking and perception develop soul forces so as
to recognise and overcome evil; then the spell is
broken leading to realisation of the higher self.244
When we look at a tree what we see its
physical component is only part of the story.
The other aspect of the tree its spiritual nature
and the spiritual forces involved with it is
veiled from our sight. The same holds if we look
at a thing, an animal or a person. The breaking
of a spell provides a second marriage theme
behind fairy tales: What is perceived with other
states of consciousness by the intellectual soul
is united with what is perceived in ordinary day
consciousness. Thus there is a marriage, a union
of the night-form with the day-form.245
The theme of transformation or metamor-
phosis can be seen in every fairy tale because
every tale is a tale of development. It is clearly
seen in The Poor Millers Boy and the Cat. The
role of a miller or a baker symbolises the process
of metamorphosis. In everyone there is a miller,
not only transforming earthly substances but also
digesting experiences.246 To inherit the mill can
mean to gain insight into the inner workings of
substance and destiny.247 The boy serves a cat
(representing the senses) for seven years, working
with silver tools and building a silver house.
(Silver is connected with the moon, so working
with silver suggests working under the influence
of the moon, that is, not fully consciously).
After which time the cat is transformed into
60
a princess, the youth having transformed his
senses into higher faculties. Transformation or
metamorphosis is also seen in the tale of Hans in
Luck: Hans several times trades down his lump
of gold and joyfully each time first for a horse,
then a cow, a pig, a goose, grindstones; he finally
loses those and is overjoyed. Shedding burdens
is a joy; each time Hans heart becomes lighter
until his soul is cleared of all hindrances and he
can experience the spiritual his gold has been
transformed into a golden faculty of heart.248 In
many tales there is a loss or sacrifice because part
of us has to be sacrificed in order for something
else to be born.
The tasks demanded in a fairy tale,
corresponding to trials and tribulations, can
mean mastering the different elemental realms.
For example, in The Queen Bee the third son
manages first to collect the thousand pearls (the
mineral realm) by sunset with the help of ants
(who live underground in the mineral realm).
Next he obtains the key to the princess bedroom
from the realm of water (the bottom of the lake)
with the help of ducks, masters of that realm.
And finally for him the queen bee (master of
the air realm) spots which of the youngest of the
princesses had fallen asleep after eating honey.
All three realms are overcome through kindness
and love. Another viewpoint sees the bee, which
changes vegetable/sun-substance into honey, as a
symbol of turning earthly experiences to wisdom,
portraying awakening powers of consciousness.249
The three brothers of this tale could represent
the three stages of human development sentient
soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul
the last and youngest having sufficient knowledge
as well as reverence and responsibility for nature
to overcome the trials (which could represent
stages of spiritual development), marry the
princess and inherit the kingdom (that is, the soul
finds its higher self).250
In many fairy tales threefoldness can be
found. There are often three scenes, a beginning,
a middle and an end past, present and future.
The trials to be undertaken typically number
three. The three soul forces of thinking, feeling

and willing can be seen in Spindle, Shuttle and
Needle. The spindle can be seen to represent
thinking (thoughts revolve in the head), the
needle with its forces of iron represents the will
forces (which bring about a transformation),
and the shuttle with its golden thread a path
of illumination that represents feeling (feeling
connects thinking with the will and the shuttle
connects and creates a harmonious pattern).251
In Goethes Tale of the Green Snake and the
Beautiful Lily, three kings represent three
future soul faculties: a brass king a future
ability to act (freely out of a sense of global
community, Fraternite), a silver king a future
feeling (selflessly loving others and the world,
compassionate, Egalite) and a gold king a future
thinking (more free to trace the truth, Liberte)252.
The three physiological divisions of the physical
body can be seen in Little Snow-White where
the Queen, Snow-Whites stepmother, tries first
to stop her breathing and circulation system by
lacing her so tightly that she cannot breathe,
next she attacks the nerve-sense system with
a poisonous comb, and lastly she assaults the
metabolism with a poisoned apple. The three
human bodies physical, etheric and astral (soul)
may be reflected by a mantle of copper, a mantle
of silver and a mantle of gold respectively.
There is a fourfold division of the human
being since we comprise a physical body,
an etheric body, a soul and a spirit. One
interpretation of The Bremen Town Musicians
sees the donkey as the physical body, the hound
as the etheric body, the cat as the astral body/
soul and the cockerel as the spirit. The robbers
in that story can be a picture of the negative
present before the physical body, etheric body,
soul and spirit get their act together. From another
viewpoint the tale shows a metamorphosis of the
lower instincts.
The number seven, a human number related
to time, is seen in the days of the week and from
their traditional names, the sun and six planets,
in the seven human organs which correspond to
them, in the seven Christian festivals and in the
seven colours of the rainbow. In The Wolf and
61
The Genuine Fairy Tale
the Seven Little Kids, the seven goats can be seen
as the seven major organs of the human body, and
thereby as the seven planets also; the youngest
kid the most tender and childlike of the soul
forces took it upon himself to save himself and
also the others; he hid in a clock case which can
be seen to represent the human heart,253 which
reflects the sun forces, the light and warmth of
love, and through this power comes salvation.254
The number twelve is a cosmic number, being
the number of constellations in the zodiac and
as the sun passes through each of these in a year,
also the number of months. We pass through the
twelve constellations on our way to incarnate on
earth; the twelve regions of the zodiac are active
in our twelve senses. Some see in the twelve good
fairies in The Sleeping Beauty the twelve signs
of the zodiac, out of whose forces the human
being is constituted.255
In some fairy tales the feminine character,
usually a girl or princess, is in a receiving gesture;
for example, Sleeping Beauty is a classic picture
of the soul waiting for the spirit to awaken it. Walt
Disney chose to film primarily those fairy tales in
which a girl is weak, helpless or bewitched and a
male figure meets trials and liberates her. In other
tales it is the soul that is active. For example, in
The Seven Ravens a girl sets out to find and free
her brothers; in Snow-white and Rose-red the
action of the two girls breaks the enchantment.
For children a variety of tales best shows the full
range of human capacities.
In every fairy tale there is egotism, whatever
its disguise. It is particularly obvious in The
Sea-Hare, whose princess has uncontrollable
pride with the power of all-knowingness; she is
a complete head-being with no feelings (all head
and no heart); the youngest brother makes her
first uneasy, then alarmed, then she feels innocent
wonder and pleasure in his sea-hare disguise such
that her proud egotism gives way to compassion
and she is won.256
In almost every fairy tale are found greediness,
cruelty, inhumanity and plain evil perpetrated
by the likes of a witch, stepmother or bad fairy.
They are archetypes of the evil in each of us, in
CHAPTER 4
every human being. These characters are typically
cold, cruel, greedy, angry, deceptive, imprisoning
or all of these. Of the stepmother in Little Snow-
White Beckh wrote, The stepmother is hard,
physical matter, through which the temptation to
envy and pride can enter a light-filled soul. We
know that it is the crystallization and hardening
of light that has created matter. In this are held
the forces of hate, in contrast to the forces of
cosmic love active in the warmth of the sun. The
wonderful mirror into which the stepmother gazes
is the moon-related mirroring power of matter
which awakens egoistic self-knowledge and envy in
the heart.257
In other words the evil character presents
an aspect in each of us against which we must
struggle in order to become a truly human
being, so that our imprisoned spirit may be
freed. We each have to battle against the
traditional temptations, besides the modern-day
institutionalised evil and materialistic thinking. A
counterpart to the witch/stepmother/bad fairy in
the modern world could be said to be the forces
of materialism through advertising and the media,
which feed our egotism and tempt us with gold (as
money, shares, air tickets, designer clothes, second
car or home, swimming pool, etc.) to harden our
hearts and disregard those who are in greater
need of our money and attention.
Some parents would like to spare their
children from the evil in fairy tales, but it is
impossible to shelter a child from the power of
the witch;258 in everyday life the child senses her
in an angry tone, a glinting eye or a sly grin. The
child can find consolation in the fairy tales, as
they bring images of the overcoming of evil and
its redemption. An example is seen in the tale of
Rumpelstiltskin. An elemental being seeks to
gain control of the new forces of the future (the
baby); yet he gives the queen the opportunity
to defeat him. Evil forces have a place in the
world; yet ultimately they seek redemption, and
that redemption can come only through human
beings. The way to freedom for the individual,
and at the same time the way to redeem evil
forces, lies firstly through recognising these
62
forces knowing the name of something means
recognising its nature.259 Only after evil has been
recognised can it be overcome and transformed
and thereby redeemed.
Adults need for fairy tales
Just as good food gives an enjoyable taste to
the tongue and then goes on to nourish the body
without our awareness, so too do fairy tales give
us a pleasant experience and go on to nourish the
soul. The soul hungers to enjoy picture-images
of its unconscious experiences.260 If adults have a
healthy, open-hearted mind, they will happily
turn back to fairy tales, thus not giving up the
deepest and most important part of their nature
what is incomprehensible for the intellect:
a sensing within ourselves, a sense for what is
pictured in the fairy tales and in the simple,
artless, primordial fairy tale mood.261
Since World War II, two generations have
grown up by and large without fairy tales
they were abandoned in favour of the media
and stories in keeping with the rationalism
and materialism of the times. One of the
consequences was that young people in the 1960s
sought satisfaction in Tolkiens, Lord of the Rings
instead. Those who miss out on fairy tales will
later devour them readily, at any age.
In his rigorous research of world myth,
Joseph Campbell included the collected tales of
the Brothers Grimm, the various Grail legends
and the work of Carl Jung, who said, Myth is
more individual and expresses life more exactly
than does science. Campbell realised that myths
and legends represent something profound: He
discovered that the symbols of mythology are not
haphazard inventions and neither could they be
incorrectly applied or permanently suppressed.262
He compared hundreds of tales and tribal legends
from many cultures and epochs and discovered an
archetypal plot common to all stories. Presented
in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the
archetypal plot consisted of nineteen episodes
which all myths wholly or partly contain (although
not always in the same sequence).
 The Genuine Fairy Tale

A Hollywood researcher, Vogler, read Summary

Campbells book and later enthused, [Hero] The content of fairy tales portrays soul
stories are accurate models of the workings experiences, cosmic truths, the process of the
of the human mind, true maps of the psyche. individuals development, the elemental world,
They are psychologically valid and emotionally folk wisdom and apocalyptic imaginations267 or,
realistic.263 With Campbells book Vogler more simply, our physiology, our soul life and our
discovered the success factor underlying the spiritual history. They present the problems of
plots of successful movies. He reduced the existence in a form in which the child can digest
nineteen steps of Campbells hero to twelve, and them,268 so that the child is inwardly strengthened
his writing on this is now required reading for all to face whatever challenges life serves him,
movie screenwriters. The screenwriter of Star Wars with the assurance that whatever happens, he
studied Campbells book deeply, and the resulting can succeed. Providing soul nourishment for
film is a perfect example of a heros journey. It children and adults alike, fairy tales touch our
seems that when people return again and again subconscious memories of the distant past,
to see the same movie, as if seeking some kind provide reassurance for the present and promise a
of religious experience (it is) because [the distant, shining future for humanity.
movie] reflects the universally satisfying patterns At the deepest level fairy tales answer the
Campbell found in myths.264 Perhaps certain great riddles of existence, such as: What is man?
Hollywood movies are the new fairy tales to satisfy What is the purpose of human life? Where have
our soul hunger. we come from and where are we going?
Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Apprentice points
to the truth that mastery of life is not conferred
at the end of the apprenticeship years and
henceforth an inalienable profession, but is a
ceaseless wandering in which the goal turns out
to be the way, and the way the goal.265 Thus our
life in modern times can be said to correspond
to only a part of the journey in the fairy tale.
For many that is a succession of interminable
problems. Perhaps that is why so many modern
stories do not give a sense of long, long ago and in
the end everything being fine, yet the middle-aged
and elderly today sorely need stories with a happy
ending. By hearing a fairy tale we are reminded
of our long-forgotten origin and reassured of our
future. Tales showing that someone can be blessed
with pure joy are heartening. For adults the fairy
tale highly recommended is Goethes Tale of the
Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily a parable
of the human condition, full of relevance to the
social future of humanity at the end of the 20th
century a blueprint for social change266 a
profound and meaningful gift for adults today.

63


Chapter 5.

Music, Song and Narration for Puppet Shows

Creating songs for puppet shows This elongated C

Every puppet play needs at least one song, signifies common time,
preferably two, three or more. The mood of a song a double rhythm or a
is usually established by the words; consequently 4/4 time signature.
the words are decided upon before the music
and not vice versa. For a song to be interesting to This signifies a triple
adults, it must be sophisticated, but small children rhythm or 6/4.
need it kept simple. Putting two notes per syllable
is considered intellectual so should be done only This shows that three
rarely or left until the children are 6 or 7 years main beats are
old. subdivided into three
Without thinking we adults try to create a or 9/4.
normal melody in the mood of the third and
with the security of a key, so for young children
we must consciously avoid the G major and E
minor keys that can creep into our pentatonic
These signatures give some freedom to
creations. (For example, going up and down in
minimise the beat and mean that each measure
thirds such as A to top D and ending on a G
may take up the whole line of music; the bar lines
would produce a G major key; beginning with E,
are minimised and may be written simply as a
then G and B would give an E minor key.) The
dotted line. If a song begins with the words the
fourth interval has tension and is very awakening.
or a, then it should start on an upbeat (in other
Many marches begin with fourths and it is used
words, the first note of the song is the last and
for sirens; examples are DG, EA, Atop D,
only note in the first measure).
Btop E, and these should be avoided as much as
Lastly a simple mood of the fifth tune can
possible. The sixth interval (such as DB) should
be created or taken from a book of mood of
be avoided at all costs.
the fifth music such as Quintenlieder269 or Let Us
A song can be created easily: First the words
Form a Ring.270 It is sung without an instrumental
are written perhaps a verse of speech already
accompaniment so that the child can hear one
given in the fairy tale or a short verse from a
tone at a time. An example a simple song
poem or one can be made up. Next by walking to
created to accompany the sun in The Seven
the words, one can tell if it needs a double rhythm
Ravens:
(1-2-1-2) or a triple rhythm (1-2-3, 1-2-3). A double
rhythm is a waking and walking rhythm, whereas
a triple rhythm is a waltz and has a calming,
restful quality. Better than using a conventional
time signature for mood of the fifth music is to
use one of the following:

64
 Music, Song and Narration for Puppet Shows

A second song can accompany the morning star in the same story:

A good song to finish a puppet play is: Kalimba or finger

The bells are all ringing piano. This African
The voices are all singing instrument is
Today is the day of the wedding feast obviously particularly
Well dance and well sing and well drink and well eat. appropriate for
African folk and fairy
Singing exercises tales, such as The Story
of Akimba and The Winning of Kwe Langa.
Simple songs well sung was Steiners advice
to teachers. With exercises and practise, teachers Glockenspiel or a
can sing accurately with freedom and joy, all of wooden xylophone.
which will be imitated by the children. Originally A simple tune
people sang solely to give appreciation to God. can accompany
Now, when singing for young children, we need a journey. The
to feel joyful, open and full of wonder. Smiling C and F tones can
improves the quality of tone and is especially be removed, to ensure it is
important for the high notes. It is important to pentatonic.
warm up the voice for singing before a puppet
show. Chimes can tinkle to sound like water.
A light swipe of all the
Music for puppet plays tones can reinforce a
Music before the play begins lifts the audience salutary moment in the
out of the everyday world and takes them, so to story.
speak, where the story might have happened.
Music frames the play at the beginning and the The pentatonic flute
end. It can accompany a puppet on his/its journey can accompany a shepherd or child puppets when
when there is no dialogue and least action. It can they do a little dance. It is played with the
reinforce a surprise, for example, in The Story of mouthpiece totally encompassed by the lips,
Akimba when the cow opens her mouth and a not like a regular recorder. The mouth is
gold coin falls out. Examples of some appropriate completely relaxed and the finger touch
instruments follow. light. A Native American flute/recorder
can accompany a Native American
folk tale, such as How Glooskap
Found the Summer.

65
CHAPTER 5
Bell. A tinkling bell can accompany
water, a journey through a meadow or a
call to heaven.
The kinderharp (childrens lyre)
has a gentle tone. Its traditional shape is like an
angels wing. Children quickly become quiet and
listen when it is played. As it has no resonating
body (soundbox), the tone is especially clear,
without reverberations, and more in keeping with
the mood of the fifth than any other instrument.
It is ideal for the beginning and ending of the
puppet show. Standing it on a table makes it a
little louder and easier for the audience to hear.
The teacher in the classroom needs to not look
at the strings but to be open to the children and
looking at them. However, for a puppet show
(s)he can choose to look at the strings or stage and
thereby help the children to focus their attention.
Playing the kinderharp
It is held almost upright by the outstretched
left hand so that the back of the curved resonance
body rests in the palm and the fingertips curve
A fifth interval is composed of seven half steps between
tones; on a piano when all black and white keys are
included, a half-step is from one key to the next.
66
round the frame; the player can thus feel the
instrument vibrate. The right wrist is more or
less straight, with the heel of the hand near the
base of the kinderharp (not up the side) so that
the fingers roughly parallel the strings. (It is never
played horizontally as its tone would be completely
different.) Some use the left ring finger to play
E and the left index finger to play B; others play
only with the fingers of the right hand. The left
thumb is not used to play a tone but may be
rested on the left side. Each tone is played with a
light stroking by the underside of the fingertip in
a leftwards movement so that the finger comes to
a stop on the next string. A position midway along
the strings is used, otherwise it would sound
more metallic. Tone A is always played by the
right index finger and is the first note to become
automatic for the person playing, it being the
home tone, the starting point.
Temperature changes, humidity variation and
dust all reduce the quality of the tone. It should
not be played outdoors and when not in use
is best wrapped in silk in its case to help avoid
fluctuations in temperature.
Tuning the kinderharp
In the time of Bach and Verdi, all tuned tone
A to 432 Hertz (cycles per second) and adjusted
the other notes accordingly. With the modern,
intellectual age and the speeding up of the pace
of life today, most tune A to 440 Hz. Some
orchestras even tune to 444, and that makes
the strings sound glorious. Unfortunately today
many people are likewise highly strung as a
permanent condition. At 444 the experience
is brought up into the head, with tension and
excitement, with the breath trapped inside, all
very exciting for an orchestras audience. In other
words, at 444 the space between the tones has
a quality of tension, not harmony. It damages
the voices of opera singers to sing at 444, and in
Italy there is a movement to return to 432. In
an isolated setting the kindergarten teacher can
tune to 432, but most people play alongside other
instruments on occasions so they will need to
always tune to 440, like the others.
 Music, Song and Narration for Puppet Shows

The Narration elementary children, the narration would best be

Once the audience is seated, settled and quiet as for kindergarten.
and the puppeteers have shown with a nod or eye The narrator, Steiner said, should be a person
contact that they are ready, the narrator begins of (inner) beauty.
the show. A candle is lit to give a special mood to Warming up the narrators voice is worthwhile
the proceedings, heralding the beginning of the even if it can be fitted in only several hours
magical atmosphere, the start of a journey away beforehand. The following phrases can be recited
from the here and now. The audiences attention whilst standing, taking a deep breath before each.
becomes focussed simply looking at the flame Saying them a little slowly can help enunciation of
can mesmerize children and adults alike. If the each vowel or consonant, constantly accompanied
candle is of beeswax, its fragrance will have a by the outward breathstream. Picturing even
calming effect on the children. the very last syllable reaching the far end of the
The narrator plays introductory music while room can help the breathstream continue to and
the puppeteers, one at each end of the stage, beyond the end of each phrase.
gently lift the silk veil (not so fast that it balloons
with air) to reveal the scene. The veil is folded and Breath exercise
put backstage or simply folded lengthways and put Teachers need to speak with clear enunciation
on the floor in front of the stage. The presence and good breath, almost instinctively. This can
and removal of a veil enables a swift entrance into be helped by regular practise (for example, ten
an unexpected setting, into another world. minutes a day, three times a week) of these three
The text, marked with pauses for music or exercises.271
action, is hidden in a beautiful folder or gold-
edged book that the narrator now picks up, Breath exercise:
opens and begins to read. Although she appears Reforging gales
to read from the text at least part of the time, it Through foghorns
is preferable that she not only memorize it but Hails through surges
know it by heart. When the story is part of her, Through whirlpools
she is free to have her head up much of the time In wavering
and, with an awareness of the audience, she Whales in quavering
watches the action on stage, adjusting the pace Waves gaping
of narration as necessary. If a hitch or accident Gaping wheezing
occurs, she pauses and may tide things over with In freezing
music or even a few extra, appropriate words. Freezing breathing
Whether or not there is dramatization Cleaving
in the narrators voice depends on the age of
the children. For kindergarten children (that Articulation exercise:
is, up to about 6 years old) there should be Nimm neat nuns now
no dramatization whatsoever but clear, calm, On nimble moody mules
level, even speech even when violent action is
described. For first grade children (67 years old) Fluency exercise:
there is some variation in the level of pitch and Lulla leader limply
some dramatization so that the narration is just a Liplessly laughing
little exciting. The intonation and dramatization Lumbering laggardly loiterer lurch
are increased until for fifth grade children (1011
years old), the narrator is no longer limited in any
way. For an audience of both kindergarten and

67

Chapter 6.
Some Practical Guidelines for
Puppetry Performance
Readiness for fairy tales
Following nursery rhymes, dandling and
bouncing rhymes, parents lullabies, songs and
rocking games comes a readiness for fairy tales.
There is no precise age; it depends on the child. A
general guideline is not before age 3 and probably
4. The child needs to be observed attentively to
see when the moment has arrived when (s)he
can be inwardly active to follow the sequence,
the storyline. The child has to stretch himself
inwardly to follow a story, and giving fairy tales
too soon would impair life forces during this
paramount phase of the first seven years when
tremendous physical growth and inner sculpting
of the organs take place. When the child is able
to follow a story, then he is ready to sit and watch
a puppet show. A foreign child still unable to
follow a story told in the second language may
be able to follow if told through a puppet show.
It is in the ninth year that the childs thinking
changes from a picture consciousness to an
intellectual thinking, so the fairy tales become less
appropriate after that.
Choosing an appropriate story
The story takes the child alone into another
world. The dangers in the world of each story
must be assessed to decide if the child can safely
enter. How much confrontation is appropriate
mainly depends on the childs age. For a good
guide to choosing a fairy tale for different ages
written by Joan Almon, see page 96. Bronya
Zahlingen has adapted some fairy tales and
folk tales into puppet plays suitable for the
kindergarten.272 Birgitte Goldman has adapted
The Queen Bee.273
In the kindergarten, children are told stories
such as the fairy tales which concern the universal
68
human being, laying the foundation for a sense
of humanness. Although the Grimms stories
are German, they are beyond Germanness; they
simply come through that culture to express
the universal. In the Grimms collection there
are fairy tales suitable for children as young
as age 3, at which age they can cope with least
dangers in the story. Their ability to digest a story
progressively increases until age 6. When they are
growing out of the safe world of early childhood,
their thinking and perception take a big jump,
they are less dreamy and faraway in their minds
and are awake, present and more conscious.
Suddenly at age 6 more complex problems and
greater danger in the story world correspond
to their own new phase of inner development.
Children do not take the tales literally and unless
there is dramatization they are not afraid of them.
That the donkey is really a prince comes as no
surprise they knew it all along.
The legends, more recent than the fairy tales,
are placed in historical time. They concern the
identity of a people, an aspect of their history
such as the life of a saint. They are appropriate
for 2nd grade (78 years old) when the child
passes through a particularly idealistic phase. The
fables and cautionary tales address the foibles
and failings of the human being; they are stories
with a moral behind them and also should not
come before 2nd grade. Hans Christian Andersen
stories, more earthbound than the fairy tales, are
not suitable before 1st grade and best kept till the
age of nine.
Often one particular child or group of
children will need a particular story; certain
books are particularly helpful here.274 Having
studied in depth a number of fairy tales the
teacher, carrying the children in her meditations,
becomes sensitive in choosing which story would

address a particular situation, such as a death
in the family, or a particular child or group of
children may be very delicate and sensitive or
rowdy and boisterous. Sometimes the children
return to school in September after a summer
outdoors, overfull of themselves. The tale
Sweet Porridge may be needed it contains
the magic word Stop. One teacher chose The
Swan Geese when, and because, they were
under the flight path of migrating geese. For an
exceedingly timid boy with a very overprotective
mother, the kindergarten teacher chose the story
Shingebiss, about a fearless duck that refused to
be intimidated by the great cold North Wind.275
The Donkey has great therapeutic value in the
kindergarten; we all have a donkey skin hiding the
better part of us, and this tale can help physically
and mentally handicapped and other children
in the class be accepted for who they really are
behind their donkey skin.
Some stories are particularly appropriate at a
certain time of year.
The cycle of the year and its festivals
There is an outer yearly rhythm in the four
seasons that is reflected in the kindergarten by
the seasonal (nature) table and in festivals such
as Harvest. There runs parallel an inner yearly
rhythm related to our faculties of thinking and
self-knowledge, the microcosmic reflection of
the macrocosmic processes underlying the yearly
rhythm of the earth.276
When we breathe in, our body is in a state of
tension (and we are ready for any action needed).
When we breathe out, there is a lessening of the
tension until, at the end of the outbreath, there is
complete relaxation. It is as if the earth takes one
in-breath from summer to winter solstices and
one outbreath from winter to summer solstices.
When we sleep we lose consciousness as our soul
and spirit leave our body and go out into the
cosmos, and we regain consciousness on their
return. In springtime the earths soul and spirit
gradually leave the body of the earth and unite
with the far distances of space, drawing in their
wake countless numbers of elemental beings.277
69
Some Practical Guidelines for Puppetry Performance
Thus, at summer solstice all activity in nature is
above ground, and the earth itself sleeps. With the
in-breath, the soul and spirit of the earth together
with elemental beings are drawn back into the
earth. Thus, wintertime for the earth is day, its
most active, wakeful time. Farmers know that
without the activity which goes on underground
in winter, seeds would not germinate and grow in
the spring as vigorously.
A Poem by Rudolf Steiner278
Asleep is the soul of Earth
In Summers heat,
While the Suns outward glory
Rays through the realms of space.
Awake is the soul of Earth
In Winters cold,
While the Suns inmost being
Lightens in spirit.
Summers day of joy
For Earth is sleep;
Winters holy night
For Earth is day.
The focus of our inner life is self-knowledge
made possible by thinking. Starting in spring
and particularly towards summer, our thinking
ability declines and to some extent our faculty
of self-knowledge similarly flags. With summer
approaching we become less autonomous and
opposed to the world; we are more inclined to go
with the flow; our sense of self-knowledge longs
to dissolve into a nature-consciousness. The focus
of our consciousness partly veers from thinking
to willing, and as our power of thinking weakens,
our power of perception gets stronger with an
increasing desire to be busily active, such as
spring cleaning and gardening. In summer we live
strongly in our perceptions (which are moulded by
our will), while thinking and self-knowledge are
somewhat reduced. Our ego-consciousness would
tend to dissolve into a nature-consciousness,
somewhat like falling asleep. Indeed, lying on a
beach in summer, we are almost out of ourselves.
CHAPTER 6
The opposite gradually happens from
summer solstice to winter. There is a waning
in strength of perceptions and will based on
nature-consciousness. We find ourselves able
to think better, our faculty of self-knowledge is
strengthened and we sense ourselves as being
more detached from the world around.279 If we
were to live into nature too much, we could be
affected by the combustion, death and decay of
autumn and become inactive and depressed. With
lessening interest in the world outside, inner life is
enlivened and enriched. In addition, the spiritual
element of thoughts is greatest at this time of
year.280 We are more inclined to the passive,
contemplative than to being physically active. It
is as if with the coming of autumn our centre of
gravity moves back into us. The academic year
rightly begins at this point when thinking is
refreshed and more fruitful.
A person who experiences the spiritual in
himself lives in the rhythm of the day (i.e., 24
hours), while anyone who wishes to experience
the spiritual in the universe must learn to live
consciously in the rhythm of the year. For such a
person, life in connection with the macrocosmic
rhythm of the earth is not at all unlike the
conscious pursuing of the modern path of
initiation; while the principle yearly festivals
become for him the great lamps that illuminate
his path into the macrocosm.281 Thus the teacher
is challenged to live more deeply into the cycle
of the year and this underpins all her work,
particularly the seasonal festivals and puppet
shows performed then.
1. Michaelmas
The period leading up to and around
Michaelmas Day (September 29) is connected to
the Archangel Michael, who is associated with
courage and is often portrayed as a warrior who
serves heaven by vanquishing evil. Michael is
also associated with harvest, it being that time of
year and because of a legend that it was Michael
who gave humanity the first scythe for harvesting
grain.
70
Evil is a strong element in the mood of this
season. After the mood of summer, with its
devotion to light and the sensual attractions of the
outdoors, we are challenged to brace ourselves, to
face our responsibilities and the inner dragon of
our desires (whatever they may be), to look inside,
see them clearly and overcome them. Michael,
who overcame and transformed the dragon, is a
symbol for what could be happening in each of us
at this time of year. With summer outdoors over
we can choose to sit indoors as couch potatoes,
or (overcoming our plant nature) sink into our
animal nature (greed, pride, passion, etc.), or
(overcoming our animal nature) struggle to be
more human the annual task of turning inwards
to the spirit and with self-will and discipline rising
to ones responsibilities in a more human way.
If older boys in kindergarten receive strong,
healthy pictures of Michael and the dragon in
story form in September, they benefit all year.
It is important that in contrast to Saint George,
Michael does not slay the dragon but puts his foot
on it and tames it; this is a picture of the task
of humanity today, not to stamp out evil (which
cannot be done) but to transform and redeem it.
Stories where the hero needs great courage are
suitable for this time of year. Rumpelstiltskin
is one such tale. Another is The Princess and
the Flaming Castle in which the hero has to
overcome an earth mountain (willing), water
(feeling) and fire (thinking) to free the princess.
2. Advent
The weeks in December leading up to
Christmas are the time of year of greatest
challenge to adults. In the first week the Archai
withdraw from supporting us, and the second
week the Archangels (folk spirits) do likewise.
During the third week our guardian angel
gradually retreats so that in the fourth week
we are forced to confront ourselves in order to
have something new.282 When darkness is at its
greatest, we stand alone facing tremendously
active adversarial forces. At this very serious time
our worst may come out, and our loved ones at
home suffer whilst socially we are expected to be

jolly. There is solace in knowing that the twelve
Holy Nights provide the most profound moment
of human freedom and much more besides. In
Advent there is the maximum opportunity for
inner spiritual work of the whole year. This period
can be seen as a series of trials which provide
the opportunity to build and cultivate certain
qualities that is, the four Platonic virtues of
justice, temperance (and prudence), courage (and
presence of mind) and wisdom.283
The fairy tale Star Money presents a
profound picture of the human soul, orphaned,
standing alone at this time of year. It has the
theme of sacrifice; we need to sacrifice part of us
in order that something else can be born. It tells
of a little girl who goes out into the darkness,
in poverty; she gradually gives away her layers of
clothing (sheaths of the physical, etheric and soul
members of the body). This giving at deeper and
deeper levels of herself comes out of her sense
of richness, fullness and gratitude; gratitude to
the true sources of life is the beginning of the
path and from that comes the capacity to give.
The story addresses and engages the higher being
of the child. At the end of the story, the stars
rain down on her, she is a transformed soul, a
beautiful being of light.
In the kindergarten, despite the growing
mood of expectancy, there needs to be a sense of
quiet waiting; all activities need to be kept in the
low-keyed, waiting mood of Advent.
3. Easter
This is the festival that is a cosmic festival,
whose date is decided by the sun and the moon.
Many teachers tell the fairy tale Little Red Cap
(Little Red Riding Hood) during Lent. The little
girl takes the sacraments of bread and wine to her
grandmother, and there is the theme of death and
resurrection. Another suitable fairy tale is Little
Snow White; with its picture of Snow White
rosy-cheeked in the glass coffin, it gives the young
child a wonderful picture of death and life in
death.
A listing of suggested seasonal stories and
fairy tales is given in the Appendix.
71
Some Practical Guidelines for Puppetry Performance
Multiculturalism
The young child needs to experience
unconsciously the brotherhood of all the human
races, to experience that we are all one. When
the teacher has an inner attitude of respect and
reverence towards people of all cultures, religions
and races, the children can unconsciously perceive
this and imitate it.284
There needs to be some deep connection
between the teacher and a tale or story from
another culture or it can easily be simply a token
gesture. The minimum is for the teacher to live in
and form a positive relationship with that culture
and story. It is better if there is a child in the
class from that other culture; the connection is
easier and a story or puppet show can be part of a
celebration, for example, of his New Years Day.
An example serves best. A Thai boy was in the
kindergarten, and his teacher asked his parents if
they could bring something of their culture into
class, for example, a puppet show. The parents
were very positive, but then two years passed with
no news. Suddenly the parents announced the
puppet show was ready. They came into class and
performed The Crow, the Beans and the Sesame
Seeds, complete with songs. It was delightful, and
the Thai boy glowed with pride.
Some homework before a puppet show
In puppetry, as in everything else, it is the
effort that counts. Reading the tale several
evenings before falling asleep enables waking
up with new understanding of it. The teacher
in particular must avoid like and dislike, a
fixed interpretation and distraction; it is a great
responsibility to be as open and true a vessel for
the truth of these tales as possible. If a teacher
feels an inner barrier to a tale, it should not be
tampered with. (S)he can simply choose a different
tale instead.
If the narrator observes and studies each of
the creatures in a fairy tale, his/her narration will
ring more true. The whole puppetry group needs
to work deeply with a fairy tale to understand it
and fathom its meaning; on this condition the
CHAPTER 6
richness and life-giving forces of the fairy tale will
be available to the children. The narrator also
needs to be aware of the deep meaning of the
tales because what lives in the soul of the teacher
is more important to the child than the actual
substance of what he teaches.285 If the narrator
merely memorises the words with her head only,
the children will receive it in their heads only and
their behaviour will show they have been short-
changed. Indeed if a child afterwards asks, Is it
true? it likely shows the teller has not worked
with the tale sufficiently, is not reverently aware
of its deep content. An answer to that question
is: Yes, it is true; and one day, when you are
older, you will be able to find the truth of it for
yourself.286 To tell a tale from the heart and not
the head, one can practise telling it while walking
outdoors; this way through rhythmic, metabolic
activity, it is digested and worked through and
becomes part of the etheric (or habit) body so that
the tale can be given from the heart.
Parents concerns with fairy tales
The typical fairy tale hero(ine) leaves the
castle, innocent and ignorant, goes along a path
beset with difficulties to reach another castle,
confident, knowing and free. Parents would like
their child to be able to go from the first to the
second castle without the problems; yet they are
inevitable. The purpose of life is inner change.
That only happens when a resistance is met. The
fairy tale could be a metaphor to reassure parents.
Frequency of puppet shows
In the kindergarten a fairy tale is always told
in its entirety and at least five times (usually
more) so that it can go in deeply and really be
consolidated. The memory of children in first
grade onwards enables them to take in and
digest a puppet show in only one viewing. Many
kindergarten teachers tell a certain fairy tale
three or four times a week for three weeks and
several months later bring it as a puppet show;
this way they allow the children to absorb the tale
deeply and to create well the characters in their
imaginations before presenting the puppets that
72
(except for the absent facial features) confront the
imagination with a fixed form. Conversely one
teacher with a majority of non-English speakers in
her class told stories solely through puppet shows,
and each of these four times a week for two weeks.
A long-established school with a permanent group
of puppeteers performs the same puppet show
weekly for three weeks and then changes to a new
one. One teacher performs a puppet show every
Monday morning so that something artistic meets
and can counteract what the children are bringing
from the weekend. Some schools perform a show
twice for the children in class and a third time at
a festival for the parents as well.
Choosing a puppet type appropriate
to the story
The word marionette means little Mary. The
stringed marionette occupies the moral high
ground of puppetry, being the most spiritual
of the puppet types. From one viewpoint all
is moved by the spiritual world; this puppet is
manipulated from above, potentially by spiritual
beings of light, understanding and wisdom.
Made of silk (woven sunlight), it moves by gliding
or flying. Its stage is not absolutely flat but
draped with silk to recreate the etheric world. It
transports us quickly into a remote other world,
far away from day-to-day matters. For this kind
of puppet only the fairy tales are appropriate and
those few folk tales which have the hallmarks of a
fairy tale, of which The Winning of Kwe Langa
is an example. Unless a folk tale is true for us all,
the story of the universal human being, it is best
left for children over age seven.
For a fairy tale, marionettes or tabletop
puppets are the best choice. The tabletop puppet
is free-standing and may or may not have arms. It
is moved from behind by a clearly-seen hand, or
thumb and forefinger. The stage covering must be
flat for its movement. It is made of down-to-earth
but natural materials usually wool, wool felt or
cotton cloth. This puppet will suit any story and is
easily made and moved.
Tabletop puppets give a fairy tale a more
earthy physical quality and address the will more

clearly. Marionettes would give the same fairy
tale a dreamier mood, appearing more ethereal
and addressing more the spiritual realm. An
interesting comparison between marionettes and
tabletop puppets has been made for the same fairy
tale.287 Occasionally puppet types are mixed in the
same production. An example is The Elves and
the Shoemaker where the cobbler and his wife
may be tabletop puppets but the elves could be
small, peach-colored, silk marionettes. Similarly
Rumpelstiltskin can be made of wool roving (as
an elemental is less substantial) and the remaining
characters made of felt or cotton.
Puppets for shows to nursery
and kindergarten
1. With the utmost care Wilma Ellersiek has
woven together speech, song, rhyme and hand
movements into delightful finger plays which
are the very first puppet plays for the very young
child and suitable at least until the end of the
kindergarten years (c. age 6).288 Human warmth,
rhythm and the living forces of speech can be
ensouled through the human being in these
movements.
2. Fingerstrips. Silk or cotton strips (say, 9"
x 1") can be tied around the fingertips of one
hand, each strip a different solid colour which can
represent a different character. Adults can wear
and move them to a story, rhyme or song for ages
24.
3. Knot dolls. Into a square piece of natural
fabric is put a firm sphere of wool batting and tied
off to form a head; two or all corners are each
tied in a knot and, hey
presto there is a simple
puppet!
4. Finger puppets.
A finger fills the hollow
body. The head can be
very simply made without
facial features. Movement
is primarily nodding
and bowing. They are
especially suited for shows
for 3- and 4-year-olds.
73
Some Practical Guidelines for Puppetry Performance
5. The tied handkerchief puppet suits the
brief and simple story with one or few characters.
A piece of fabric is tied in front of the children to
become a puppet. Such a minimal puppet greatly
needs the childrens imagination to complete
it. It is suitable, for example, for the first two
stories given in Bronya Zahlingens book. A cloth
wrapped around the hand and arm can become
a troll. Similarly for Bronyas The Hungry Cat,
a single large piece of red fabric can be folded
carefully over one hand so that two corners
protrude upwards as the ears; the remainder
covers the arm as the cats body and its ready. The
remaining characters could be tabletop puppets.
6. Tabletop puppets (cylinder dolls) are
simply made with a tube of wool felt for the body,
a head with no facial features is attached and the
body stuffed with wool batting. (Free-standing
finger puppets are an alternative.) One person can
narrate and perform single-handedly with several
puppets of this type. Ideal for 3-year-olds is a short
story, some of it in verse, with a very simple plot
and lasting a maximum of five minutes in total.
For children of age 4 and over, these versatile
characters can be incorporated into many puppet
plays of nature stories, folk and fairy tales.
7. The silk marionette or stringed puppet
is appropriate for children of 4 years and up.
Being manipulated from above (and from one
viewpoint, all is moved by the spiritual world),
they are particularly appropriate for the most
spiritual stories, the fairy tales. Children ready
for 1st grade (e.g., 6 years old) are able to watch
such a show of up to 25 minutes in length. For
anything but the simplest story at least two people
are needed to move the puppets.
The imagination of children up to age 7 badly
needs exercise for its development. All these
puppets with minimal detail give the greatest
scope for that imagination. For this reason, facial
features of eyes, mouth and so on are usually
omitted.
As soon as a puppet show is over, children
will want to imitate. Most teachers do not
allow free use, or even any use, of the puppets
they themselves use. One or two simple cotton
CHAPTER 6

marionettes and several tabletop puppets or free- or the floor.

standing dolls can be available every day during Cardboard
free play. Some give a marionette a base on which against
it can be stood when the child tires. chairbacks
can make the
Stage and Scenery background, draped with cloth. Two or three
1. Laptop stage playstands put together and draped with fabric
can make a simple stage.
The puppeteer can sit with a special apron
Chairs
with the puppets in the pockets or simply spread
with a wooden
a silk over her lap and reach behind her for the
plank across
puppets. This human stage can be extended on
offer a flexible
either side with chairs. Alternatively a playstand
arrangement that
on each side can be draped in the same colour
can easily be taken
as the puppeteers clothing so that she blends
by car. Thus the play can can be practised in one
with the background. This puppeteer is the
place, dismantled, transported and performed in
most mobile, easily able to perform in public
another.
places such as hospitals and libraries. The ritual
The cardboard
of beginning and ending the play is particularly
background, its
important here to emphatically signal the
corners cut into
transition to another world at the beginning
curves, is fixed
and the return to the present at the end; one
with masking tape.
puppeteer begins by removing her jewellery
A bedspread or
(which could otherwise be eye-catching) and
light-coloured sheet
finishes by repeating the series of opening actions
is put flat against
in reverse order. When the children are kept
the background,
waiting unexpectedly, one can produce a silk
then silk so that
handkerchief or finger puppets from a pocket and
the cardboard does
spontaneously perform.
not show through
the silk. It also
2. Stage of a circle of children makes the silk look less physical.
Long pieces of fabric are stretched over all The entire stage is covered with silks freshly
the (seated) childrens laps. A puppet may make a ironed before the final performance(s). For
journey around the circle and the older children tabletop puppets to move smoothly, the stage
could each operate a puppet. For example, must be flat. For marionettes both stage and
Mother Holle can be performed this way with background are draped with silks in an attempt
single-stringed marionettes and a blue cloth on to depict the
the floor at the feet of the children to show the etheric world,
path. that world of life
forces where all
3. Stage of table, chair or is in continuous,
playstand flowing motion.
One or more tables is The edges of
often convenient. It needs the silk fabrics are turned under, not to show.
to be low enough for the Straight lines are avoided especially where there is
children to see easily when seated on chairs a change of colour.

74
 Some Practical Guidelines for Puppetry Performance

Lastly, landmarks in the story are placed on the stage, the simpler the better.

HUT
two pieces of bark

CASTLE
silk-covered
wooden
HILL blocks
silk-covered crumpled
paper bag or pillow
TREES
cardboard cone
& green silk

Concerning scenery suggested below for The Seven Ravens: The stage for a fairy tale usually has
two or three colours for each realm. The realm of the sense world, which is often portrayed as a forest,
in this case is depicted in green and brown. The home area is part of the past and has not yet undergone
transformation, so brown is used there. The home itself is pink-mauve being a warm and good place
with a good mother.

Possible scenery in silk for marionette play of The Seven Ravens

Gauze veil covers sun, moon and
morning star marionettes over dark
Warm pink-mauve
blue with gold stars sewn onto it Gap behind mountains
suggests a good home
pale blue allows light in
dark purple

brown

the well (blue)

green brown dark blue Glass Mountain: cardboard base covered with grey
wool fabric, then silk gauze also draped inside. Its
The scalloped background enables entrances and exits. angular shape suggests crystal glass. It needs icy tones.

75
CHAPTER 6
Movement of the Puppets
A tabletop puppet is held low down on its
body (never by the head). If it is held solely by the
thumb and forefinger (with three fingers folded
into the palm of the hand), then the puppeteers
hand least obscures the puppet; this is especially
important for small puppets such as small
animals.
Puppets should either face the audience or be
at an angle of up to 45 degrees away from a full
frontal position. (If held sideways to the audience,
some people would see only a back view.) One
exception may be when a puppet dances in a
circle.
When a puppet walks along, it is moved
smoothly forward just above the stage, not quite
touching the ground and not so high that it
appears to be flying. In order to spend more time
on the journey it can take an S-shaped path,
meandering along in the limited space available.
When a puppet talks, it is tipped forward
then upright, forward then upright, slowly, while
the narrator speaks the puppets words. As in
eurythmy, action precedes the words or music, so
the puppet can tip forward before the first words
of its speech. Similarly, it can begin to travel
before the dialogue tells us so. Besides human
puppets other characters and items may speak,
such as a tree, a stream or an oven; each of these
likewise is tipped slowly forwards and upright
when it speaks.
To show anger a puppet may, for example,
jump up and down on the spot. If sad, a puppet
may tip forward and turn a little from side to side
as if weeping and shaking its head. Puppets which
are elemental beings should be especially lively.
Puppets left unmoving on stage appear lifeless,
even dead. An unmoving puppet can be removed
from the stage, hidden behind a piece of scenery
or suspended against the backcloth and a silk
cloth draped over to hide it.
In countries where people read from left to
right it is debatable whether puppets should move
predominantly from left to right on stage as the
audience would see it, or vice versa. It can seem
natural to begin on the left, being the side of
76
the heart realm. It is almost as if we are inwardly
predisposing the children forward to the right.
This can also be a preparation for later reading.
For The Seven Ravens a famous puppeteer,
Bronya Zahlingen, put the home starting-point
on the right instead; perhaps she saw the journey
into the night as a going back to the past. With
the design illustrated here the main character
begins on the left, journeys right and returns
home again. (After the story ends, one can easily
imagine her going to the right, into the future).
Reviving an earlier puppet show
Even when puppets, props and scenery have
been stored for a period very carefully, reviving a
puppet show requires the same careful preparation
and almost as much time. Although already made,
the puppets will need adjustment (e.g., marionette
strings for a different stage or puppeteer). Always
the success of a puppet show depends on the
depth at which it is carried by those involved.
There are no shortcuts.
Puppets for children in grades
1 through 7 (ages 613)289
In grade school, children themselves make the
puppets. The stringed marionette continues to
have a place all the way through school. For ages
9 and up, the marionettes strings are invisible.
The marionette apart, certain puppets suit certain
ages.
The glove puppet is inappropriate before 1st
grade because it is enlivened by an unseen hand
from below and so tends to show the lower side of
human nature. Its movements are very restricted,
being limited to nodding, bowing, folding the
arms and hands, and grasping a stick or tool
with which it can beat something or someone.
For 1st and 2nd grade children (ages 68), it
has a definite place; they enjoy making them,
creating dialogues and presenting a show to their
classmates. It is particularly useful for stories with
much dialogue.
3rd grade children (ages 89) can make
simple marionettes by folding a piece of fabric
in half, cutting a hole in the centre of the fold

and pushing a puppet head up through the hole.
A single string is sewn through the head and
a second string is attached to two corners that
become the hands. As the Old Testament is under
study in this year, a puppet play could be written,
for example, to show the life of Moses. For beaded
Egyptian hair, parents could be called on to help.
Songs between scenes maintain the tempo. Thus
puppets enable what the children are studying to
be more alive and to sink in more deeply.
4th grade children (ages 910) can also make
marionettes but with more strings so that the
head can bow.
In the 5th grade (ages 1011), both Asian
shadow puppetry and hand-and-rod puppets
are appropriate and in keeping with study of
ancient India. One teacher wrote an hours
puppet play of a story from the Ramayana for
hand-and-rod (Javanese wayang golek) puppets.
Instead of carving the heads, they were made
by the handwork teacher from a heavy rubber
latex product called neoprene. A head was first
moulded in plasticine, a plaster cast was made of
it, neoprene was poured into the plaster mould
and the head was ready next day. The bodies
were cut from wood by adults and shaped using
Illustration 5. Wayang golek (Javanese rod puppets)
depict gods and heroes of the Indian epics.
77
Some Practical Guidelines for Puppetry Performance
a band saw. After the children sanded the heads
smooth, they were carefully painted by one parent
using acrylic paints and lastly a glossy lacquer.
The children sanded the bodies, assembled the
arms, sewed on fabrics and decorated them.
The work took 11 hours in class per week for
three months. The children performed standing
behind a 4' 6" high curtain and simply held up
the puppets with one hand and operated the
arms with the other. They sang a song in Sanskrit
created by the class teacher. Their performance for
the parents was a delight to watch, and each child
took his/her puppet home afterwards to keep.
The 6th grade child (ages 1112) benefits
from creating and operating jointly with two other
children larger-than-life puppets. To perform, one
holds the body and the others an arm each. They
make good, pompous, Roman orators and can be
incorporated into the sixth grade play.
With 7th grade children (ages 1213), fully
jointed marionettes with six strings and a wooden
control bar are possible. Puppet types could
be mixed, for example, by including trees each
operated by three children, an appropriate joint
activity for this age. Their study theme, Medieval
times, offers many ideas.

Selected Bibliography and
Sources Consulted
Aeppli, Willi, The Care and Development of the
Human Senses, Steiner Schools Fellowship, UK.
Almon, Joan, Choosing fairy tales for different
ages in Overview of the Waldorf Kindergarten, Vol.
1, Waldorf Kindergarten Association of North
America. Violence and the Media, article.
Baird, Bil, The Art of the Puppet, Bonanza Books of
Crown Publishers Inc.
Benesch, Friedrich, Easter, Floris Books, 1981.
Bettelheim, Bruno, The Uses of Enchantment,
Random House, 1989.
Bittleston, Adam, Loneliness, Floris Books, 1987.
Buhler, Walter (translation) Sozial Hygiene
Merkblatter zur Gesundheitspflege im
personlichen und sozialen Leben, Nr.27.
Burton, M., New View magazine, 1999, 2 www.
newview.org.uk.
Campbell, Joseph, postscript to The Complete
Grimms Fairy Tales, Pantheon Books, 1972.
Colum, Padraic, editor, The Complete Grimms Fairy
Tales, Pantheon edition, 1972.
Constantini, Margaret, Music in the Waldorf
Kindergarten in Overview of the Waldorf
Kindergarten, Waldorf Kindergarten Association
of North America, Vol. 1.
Daniels, R., New View magazine, issue 13, 1999,
www.newview.org.uk.
Davy, John, in The Twelve Senses by Albert Soesman,
Hawthorn Press.
Day, Phillip, Health Wars, Credence Publications,
2001.
Foster, Nancy, Let Us Form a Ring, Acorn Hill
Childrens Center.
Geiger, R. About the Sea Hare, trans. Ruth Pusch,
Mercury Press, 1990.
Goldman, Birgitte, Waldorf Kindergarten Newsletter,
Fall 1994.
Grahl, Ursula, The Wisdom in Fairy Tales, New
Knowledge Books.
78
Hall, Alan, Water, Electricity and Health, Hawthorn
Press, 1997.
Healy, Jane, Endangered Minds, Simon & Schuster,
1991.
Jaffke, Freya, Significance of Imitation and
Example for Development of the Will article.
Janni, N., Waldorf Kindergarten Newsletter (UK),
Spring 1998.
Kline, Foster, Waldorf Kindergarten Newsletter (UK),
Autumn 1997.
Klugman, E. and Sara Smilansky, editors, Childrens
Play and Learning, Teachers College Press, 1990.
Knierim, Julius, Quintenlieder, Rudolf Steiner
College Press, 1994.
Large, Martin, Whos Bringing Them Up?, Hawthorn
Press, 1990.
Lebrett, Elizabeth, Pentatonic Songs.
Lobel, Arnold, Music Association Newsletter.
Mander, Jerry, Four Arguments for the Elimination of
Television, Quill, 1977.
McAllen, Audrey, The Extra Lesson, Robinswood,
1992.
________. Sleep, Hawthorn Press, 1995.
Meyer, Rudolf, The Wisdom of Fairy Tales,
Anthroposophic Press, 1989.
Moog, Helmut, quoted by Nancy Foster in The
Musical Experience of the Young Child, translated
into English, 1972.
Patterson, Peter, Spring, Wynstones Press, 1983.
Patzlaff, Rainer, Bildschirmtechnik und
Bewusstseinsmanipulation (manuscript
translation), Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart,
Germany, 1985.
Pfeiffer, Ehrenfried, On Rudolf Steiners Mystery
Dramas, Mercury Press, 1988.
Ping, Janene, A Note from the Puppet Tree in
Chanticleer newsletter, Berkshire/Taconic branch
of the Anthroposophical Society, 5 Jan 1995.
Postman, Neil, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Penguin,
1985.

Prokofieff, Sergio O., The Cycle of the Year as a Path
of Initiation Leading to an Experience of the Christ
Being, Temple Lodge, 1995.
Pusch, Ruth, What to Do about Witches in An
Overview of the Waldorf Kindergarten, Waldorf
Kindergarten Association of North America, Fall
1993.
Querido, Ren, The Mystery of the Holy Grail,
Rudolf Steiner College, 1991.
Querido, R. and W. Glas, Michaels Struggle
with the Dragon, Anthroposophical Society in
America, 1991.
Schultz, Felix, The Computer Network and the Future
of Humanity, Mercury Press, 1996.
Smith, Patti and Signe E. Schaeffer, More Lifeways,
Hawthorn Press, 1997.
Soesman, Albert, The Twelve Senses, Hawthorn Press.
Steiner, Rudolf, The Poetry and Meaning of Fairy Tales,
Mercury Press, 1989.
________. The Inner Nature of Music and the
Experience of Tone.
________. GA 290, quoted Martin Riedal, Some
notes on the effects of architectural forms.
________. Understanding Young Children,
International Association of Waldorf
Kindergartens, Stuttgart.
Stevens, L.J., et al. Essential fatty acid metabolism
in boys with attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder Am.J.Clin.Nutr. 62, 761768, 1995,
quoted in Health & Nutrition, March 1998.
79
Bibliography
Visser, Norbert, Appendix, Live Music and
Recorded Sound.
Von Kugelgen, Helmut, Marionette Theater: Posing
a Task for Socially Oriented Education, article.
________. Fairy Tale Language and the Image
of Man in Overview of the Waldorf Kindergarten,
Waldorf Kindergarten Association of North
America, Fall 1993.
Weil, Andrew, M.D. Spontaneous Healing, Ballantine
Books, New York, 1995.
What Doctors Dont Tell You, monthly magazine
published in UK, www.wddty.com.
Wilkinson, Roy, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales,
Rudolf Steiner College Press, 1993.
Winkley, Sir David, Grey Matters Current
Neurological Research and Its Implications for
Educators, seminar.
Zahlingen, Bronya, Plays for Puppets and Marionettes,
Acorn Hill Childrens Center.
Further sources recommended in 2013
Felce, Josie, Storytelling for Life: Why Stories Matter and
Ways of Telling Them, Floris Books.
Perrow, Susan, Therapeutic Storytelling.


Appendix

1. A definition of terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
2. The evolution of human consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
3. A brief history of music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4. A brief history of puppetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5. Fairy tales and stories by season . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
6. Some possible interpretations of fairy tale images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
7. Choosing fairy tales for different ages by Joan Almon . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
8. Colour indications for puppets and marionettes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
9. Directions to make tabletop (free-standing) puppets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
10. Directions to make marionettes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
11. Tips for performing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
12. Some scientific information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

(1) A Definition of Terminology In response to a request from farmers,

(for those unfamiliar with anthroposophy)
The spiritual science or anthroposophy of
Rudolf Steiner is an all-encompassing philosophy
that can be applied in any sphere of life or
occupation. Also termed wisdom of man, it
means bringing humanity into every aspect of all
that one does. Steiner maintained that properly
developed, crystal-clear thinking is the key to
inner development and that the inner spiritual
organs, lying dormant in every person, can thus
be activated. The spiritual world can thereby be
studied as exactly as modern science studies the
physical world. He gave numerous approaches to
his philosophy. Some people find one or other of
his five basic books holds the key. For others it lies
in the four, sequential mystery dramas he wrote
(the performance of which totals 24 hours). Still
others find it in the practical application of his
philosophy within their own sphere of interest.
he brought anthroposophy into farming as
biodynamic farming. Responding to a request for
the medical field, he brought anthroposophical
medicine and began the Weleda company.
Today there are anthroposophical doctors,
anthroposophical nurses and rhythmical
massage therapists. He gave pedagogical courses
and opened a school for the children of the
workers of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory.
Today there are well over 2000 Waldorf/Steiner
schools and kindergartens throughout the world.
He taught curative education and today there are
sprinklings of residential schools for handicapped
children, mainly in Europe, as well as a number
of Camphill villages which are residential homes
for mentally handicapped adults. There are
anthroposophical banks, lawyers and social
scientists. There are anthroposophical speech,
art, music and eurythmy therapists. There are
exemplary third world development projects.

80

Anthroposophical architecture is breathtaking to
behold.
Responding to a request to bring
anthroposophy into dance, Steiner created the
movement art of eurythmy. Some call it sacred
dance. It is an art of consciousness through
movement, also termed visible speech and
visible tone because each vowel, consonant and
tone has its own gesture. It is accompanied by
live music from such as a piano or lyre or by live
poetry (where one letter from each word might be
performed). Each gesture reflects the movement
in the larynx as that letter is spoken. Silk is
standard wear. Although it is very beautiful and
moving to watch, performances are uncommon
(except in Dornach, Switzerland). Its primary
purpose is the effect on the etheric body of the
person doing it. Children in Steiner schools
have a weekly eurythmy class from age four until
eighteen to promote their health and bring them
inner harmony. Eurythmy also greatly helps
coordination. Therapeutically it is done one-on-
one for a wide variety of conditions including
asthma, crossed eyes and stammering, often with
amazing results.
Many writers, including the early Christians,
consider the human being to comprise a physical
body, a soul and a spirit. The Ecumenical Council
of Constantinople in 869 ad declared that the
human spirit does not exist but only a body and
soul. Today, with the vast spread of materialism
promoted by the media, it appears that many
consider we have only a body. According to
Steiner our body is four-fold with firstly a physical
body which appears at birth and is particularly
developed up to the age of 21. It has a mineral
structure only and is therefore subject to the laws
of the physical world. Life is accorded to this
physical body by an etheric body or body of life
forces, termed by neurologists the phantom
body. It includes the life processes and all
the formative forces and is subject to the laws
governing growth and reproduction. It needs
particular protection before it is unsheathed
in the seventh year (the traditional time of the
change of teeth).
81
Appendix
The soul is the seat of the emotions; it is
unsheathed at about age 14 around puberty and
is particularly developed between ages 21 and 42.
The soul is concerned with sensations, feelings,
drives, instincts and passions and is the province
of the psychologist. It mainly comprises the astral
body, a term which is often used interchangeably
with the word soul. Part of the astral body is
the sentient soul which is concerned with the
sense world, being the recipient of sensations
from the senses. The part of the soul outside the
astral body is made up of (1) the intellectual
or mind soul, which is related to the laws and
truths of the sense world and concerned with
the intellectual process of making decisions
and plans. Humanity is now at an early stage
of development of a further part of the soul, (2)
the consciousness soul, which enables a fully
awake consciousness of the spiritual. With its
development we can become aware of what is
eternally true and eternally good. It gives an
awareness of a pure ideals, such as tolerance, and
awareness of whether or not oneself is putting that
ideal into practice. The soul is subject to the laws
of the soul world. Thinking, feeling and willing
(volition or resolve) are considered the three forces
of the soul. Thinking is connected to the brain and
nervous system, which may be termed the head
realm. Feeling is connected to the breathing and
blood circulation centred in the chest and termed
the heart or middle realm. Willing is connected
to the limbs and metabolic system. Although the
three soul forces act in concert, the child up to
age 7 shows the developing will predominating (in
imitation and movement), the child 714 shows
the particular development of feeling and the
1421-year-old that of thinking. Up to the age of
35 the feeling is particularly linked to the will,
whereas after 35 it is particularly linked to the
thinking.
The spirit is the eternal part of a person. It is
also called the individuality, the self, the entelechy
or the I (being the part of us that can say I
am). It is unsheathed after 21 years of life and
is particularly developed after age 42, hopefully
gaining an ever-increasing mastery over body and
Appendix
soul. It is the part of one that feels shame and
shows itself by its working on the soul to improve
it. It is subject to the laws of the spiritual world.
Just as the soul receives sensations from the
physical world as revelation of physical things, so
does the spirit receive intuitions as revelation of
spiritual things.
Nature subjects us (like the animals) to the
laws of metabolism, but human beings alone
subject themselves to the laws of thought, and
therefore human beings constitute a spiritual
order,290 albeit the lowest one. (Thoughts are as
real in the spiritual world as, for example, a chair
in the physical world.) Immediately above humans
are the angels, of which we have one each, our
guardian angel, watching over us much as a young
child needs a parent to watch over him/her. The
order above the angels is that of the archangels who
are responsible for large groups of people rather
than individuals. In their domain lie language
and the evolution of human consciousness in
particular periods of time. The order above the
archangels is that of the Archai who together with
the Angels and Archangels make up the Third
Hierarchy. The Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and Exusiai
make up the Second Hierarchy. The Thrones,
Cherubim and Seraphim make up the First
Hierarchy. These denominations are also found
in the Bible.
Above the First Hierarchy is the Holy Trinity.
The first aspect of this is God the Father, the
influence of which was experienced more in
earlier times such as those of the Old Testament
and today is a figure important for children up
to age 7. The second aspect is the Christ, also
termed the Christ Being, the Christ principle
or the Christ impulse. It entered the body of
Jesus at the baptism and lived on earth in that
human body for just over three years. The deed of
sacrifice at Golgotha in 33 ad meant a unification
with the earth and with humanity, causing a
turning-point whereby the evolution of human
consciousness was turned away from ever deeper
incarnation in materialism and given the potential
to become more spiritual. The Christ impulse
lives in potentia in every human being, challenging
82
us to see and treat all others as brothers. For
children ages 714, the Christ is the most relevant
figure of the Trinity, whereas for those ages 1421
it is the Holy Spirit. Golgotha marks the turning-
point in time when there was the change from
God without to God within, and the key word
changed from revenge to forgiveness. The peace
and reconciliation committees springing up in
various parts of the world signal a beginning.
The impression could be gained that Waldorf
schools promote Christianity. However, they strive
to be spiritual schools that are not religious. For
this reason they appeal to parents of all faiths. For
example the school in Boulder, Colorado, has a
parent population that is 70 percent Buddhist. As
they strive also to encourage universally human
qualities, such as courage, honesty and integrity,
they appeal to parents in all cultures.
(2) The Evolution of Human
Consciousness
According to Steiner, over ten thousand years
ago thought was experienced as divine inspiration
that came from without and not as something
created by the individual. At that time every
human being knew he was directly connected to
the spiritual world, he was conscious of his divine
origins and of the cosmos. As time went by this
direct connection was gradually lost, so religion
arose to bridge the gap between humans and the
spiritual. In ancient Greek and Roman times a
sense of self or individuality slowly began to arise.
The Ecumenical Council of Constantinople
in 867 ad issued a decree that in the Churchs
ideology the spirit no longer existed. Thereafter a
human being was to comprise of only body and
soul.291 Later, Einsteins work indirectly supported
this notion; from it came the expression
everything is relative, implying there is no truth,
no spiritual substance upon which we can rely.
Modern science has rejected the existence of the
soul, as psychologists such as Freud traced all
soul manifestations to bodily functions. Marxs
atheistic ideas fostered the idea of the human
body as a machine, a product of physical forces.

It is no wonder that today so many feel bereft,
beleaguered, isolated and floundering.
Just as a river may flow underground and later
reappear, so knowledge of the spiritual became
hidden. But since the turn of the 20th century,
it is gradually reappearing, metamorphosed as
a longing for understanding, a thirst for higher
meaning, for a reconnection to the spiritual.292
This can be seen in the great interest in
spiritual books (even though most misinform),
in the proliferation of spiritual trainings, cults
and gurus, in the growing number of people
meditating, and the word, karma has entered
everyday language. People are beginning to
see the planet earth again as a living, spiritual
being. Ethical consumerism and voluntary
simplicity have been born. Among modern-day
saints are those who give their lives to protect
the environment and to defend the rights of the
poor. As materialism loses its lustre, individuals
are encouraged to turn toward inner paths of
development in search of spiritual awakening
the awakening can only occur individually.293
According to Steiners epochs, our present
one (which began in 1500) in some respects can
be seen as a reiteration of the ancient Egyptian
epoch, but on a higher level. The Sphinx was part
eagle (representing the highest forces of thinking),
part lion (representing the purest forces of the
heart, of feeling), part bull (representing pure
will) and part human. Thus the animal parts
represent the human soul forces of thinking,
feeling and willing. A modern Sphinx would
be distorted much of mans intellectual
thought is characterised by doubt, there exist
cold-heartedness (witness homelessness, hunger
and refugees), denial and hate (for example,
nationalism and neo-Nazism), and the will may
be paralysed by fear or be unbridled as in violence
and fanaticism. All addictions such as alcohol,
drugs and television paralyse the will. Comfort
and well-being also serve to paralyse the will as
we do not extend our consciousness beyond our
sphere. The big demand for psychologists can
be said to reflect the modern souls illnesses of
doubt, hate and fear.
83
Appendix
In olden days the Sphinx asked a question,
a riddle. Humans unable to answer were
thrown into an abyss. Now that mankind has
a consciousness of self, of individuality, it is for
every individual to ask himself the riddle of
existence and then to strive if necessary for a
lifetime to answer it or face his own abyss.
Each epoch has its own mystery to solve.
For the ancient Greeks and Romans, it was the
mystery of life and death. Even today many have
not solved that mystery nearly half of Americans
are uncertain of reincarnation. In the next epoch
(36605820 ad) the mystery will be the mystery of
the word. The seed of that mystery is seen today
in the importance of the name. The mystery of
the present epoch is the mystery of good and evil.
This explains why morality today is such a grey
area. Solving the mystery involves first a waking-
up to super-sensible dimensions of existence, a
recognition of the forces of good and evil in many
aspects of everyday life and then, engaging in a
fully-conscious battle against evil. In this epoch,
facts about evil and its perception must enter the
consciousness of humanity or the aim of earth
evolution will not be reached.294 With time, a
spiritual organ of morality can be developed. Evil
can never be beaten once and for all like an air
bubble that if pushed down pops up somewhere
else. Evil cries out to be transformed so that it can
be permanently redeemed. Ability to discriminate
needs to be developed so that there can be active
perception of how evil works, particularly in
relation to materialism and to the development
of the human being. Recognition precedes the
transformation of evil.
Three dangers characterise the modern
struggle with evil.295 Firstly there is a danger,
stemming from atheism, of animalisation
of the physical body; modern sport, boxing
even by women, obsession with fitness,
sexual permissiveness, rape, child abuse and
pornography are some examples. Many people (the
elderly excepted) sleep less than people did before
television and computers, this shows a lack of
understanding of the importance of sleep for the
growth, renewal and healing of the physical body
Appendix
and also for the soul and spirit that meanwhile
reap spiritual energy for the body to use in the
day ahead. Many young children, even as young as
two years of age, do not nap after lunch and have
a late bedtime, with the result that their health
may suffer both then and in later years. A current
fashion means teenagers may wear no coats in
the winters cold and they may regularly not sleep
until the early hours of the morning. There is
generally a lack of respect, care and concern for
the physical body, which is such a marvellous
creation and temple for the spirit.
A second danger characterising the modern
struggle with evil is that of vegetation of the soul.
So many powerful distractions send the soul to
sleep (including alcohol, tranquillisers and drugs),
and television mesmerises the brain into the wave-
pattern of sleep. The visual media excel in the
creation of illusion, a tool of evil. There is a jungle
of materialistic delusions. This vegetation of the
soul can be overcome by fully grasping, and with
warm feeling, the concepts of reincarnation and
karma.296
The third danger is the mechanisation of the
spirit, that is, the fettering of the spirit so that it is
used solely for utilitarian purposes. This is a side-
effect of our wonderful, modern technology and
the stress resulting. Institutionalised, anonymous
evil hides behind the rules and regulations of
our proliferating bureaucracies, causing hardship
and injustice. We can overcome this danger by
particular spiritual study to develop a connection
with the spiritual hierarchies (angels, archangels
and so on).297 The dualistic view of good and evil
as two opposites needs to be discarded in favour
of a trinity, for evil tempts us in two directions,
and the good is the middle way between two
extremes. For example, between cowardice and
recklessness lies courage, and between passion
and apathy lies interest.
At night our soul and spirit separate from the
body and cross the threshold into the spiritual
world. We do so unconsciously but in the distant
future, we will be able to do so consciously.
Crossing that threshold in wide-awake, crystal-
clear consciousness is possible now if one follows
84
a freely-accepted inner discipline of concentration
and meditation (such as is given in the book, How
to Know Higher Worlds) whereby the soul forces
of thinking, feeling and willing are consciously
strengthened and transformed. The study of
anthroposophy also enables crossing of the
threshold, but meditation is also needed so that
the study can flow into the heart. Meditation
and the arts go hand in hand. Artistic activity
based on initiation science enables the flexibility
of soul so needed today. Crossing the threshold
involves meeting ones double, a ghastly apparition
containing ones own shortcomings from this
life and all one carries as karma out of former
incarnations. Because mankind collectively
is beginning to cross the threshold, whether
prepared or unprepared, many are having the
shattering experience of meeting the double
in the guise of personal struggle. We meet the
threshold, in a sense, daily with the news and
in relationships between people where there is
dissension, animosity or argument.
The rapid progress of science and technology
has been accompanied by a most acute soul-
sickness of individuals.298 It is as if the head, heart
and hands are no longer synchronised, with the
thinking ahead but narrowed, the feeling forces
neglected (for example, regular artistic activity
is rare) and the will paralysed. The modern soul
needs to face the nothingness, the abyss within,
in order to make the connection with the spiritual
world299 that gives life meaning. More and more
young people today are facing meaninglessness
in life, which is an outer reflection of an inner
state of mind. For most people today belief is not
enough. They need the certain knowledge that
comes from the experience of treading an inner
path, a path of inner death and resurrection.
However, it is painful to develop the higher
self before crossing the threshold (as egotism
must die), so many choose an escape sideways,
for example, by illusory thinking (such as with
drugs or virtual reality) or illusory feeling (such
as joining a cult or esoteric addiction) or illusory
action (such as violence and destruction).

The legend of Parsifal presents that characters
adventures on the Grail quest as archetypal
images of soul experiences common today. He
began with dullness of soul, a profound lack of
compassion, insensitivity to the suffering and
even death of others, a spectator consciousness
and an unbridled will to action. Unconsciously
he incurred death and guilt. He underwent
several ordeals in a long period of doubt and
suffering. Finally by a process whereby conscious
death awakened new life, he reached spiritual
enlightenment, blessedness. To succeed in the
quest for the divine elixir of the Grail is thus
to free oneself from the shackles of past deeds,
transforming inner darkness to radiant light
through consciously striving to obtain the highest,
the purest truth and goodness within oneself.
Every epoch offers the possibility of acquiring
new dimensions of consciousness. The esoteric
and exoteric aspects of knowledge and experience
can now be united, and spiritual knowledge
previously known worldwide by only a few is
open to anyone who would look for it with the
higher faculties of cognition possible in this
epoch. Levels of spiritual awareness as stages
on the ladder of esoteric development were
denoted in the Middle Ages by birds. Firstly the
goose represents earthbound consciousness, the
dullness limited to the physical senses. Secondly,
the peacock represents the stage of Imaginative
consciousness, when the spiritual organs of sight
dormant in us have been opened to give spiritual
sight or clairvoyance. (This can be achieved
by an individuals striving through specific
meditation, such as that given in the book, How
to Know Higher Worlds, but if it is achieved in a
group setting with a guru, the participants will
not be free in what they see.) Thirdly, the swan
represents the stage of Inspiration or clairaudience
(spiritual hearing). Finally the pelican represents
the ultimate, highest level of spiritual awareness
known as Intuition, of being totally at one with
the essence of a spiritual manifestation.300
The last stage in human evolution is to reach
true freedom, inner freedom, the inner maturity
of soul that neither kills nor destroys,301 when
85
Appendix
one undertakes all responsibilities freely rather
that out of duty, where all physical limitations are
irrelevant. Only in the future in freedom can a
particular sense organ be developed which will
find its centre in the physical heart and which will
enable the perception and use of Divine Love.
(3) A Brief History of Music
The progression of human consciousness
from an expanded to a more contracted state is
reflected in the history of music. During the time
of ancient Atlantis, mans consciousness was very
much out in the cosmos and very little in himself.
He experienced music in tones a seventh interval*
apart, that is, as continuing sevenths through the
full range of octaves. A person then could not
hear tones set apart because it was as if the music
of the spheres swirled continuously round him;
he experienced music more in ecstasy out in the
sphere of the gods. This experience of the seventh
continued into the early post-Atlantean epochs.
With the deeper incarnation into the physical
body of human beings gradually over time, the
experience of the seventh became unpleasant,
even faintly painful, and the fifth interval
became the pleasurable experience.302
For a long time the fifths throughout the
tonal range of different octaves were experienced.
A scale composed according to our standards
would have consisted of D, E, G, A, B and again
D and E.303 There were no C or F tones; a feeling
for them was absent. The fifth interval had a
transporting quality, so that a person felt lifted
out of himself. The central tone of the musical
experience for the ancient Egyptians (2907
747 bc) would correspond to tone A, for the
ancient Greeks it was lower at E and now it is
middle C (that is also the centre of the voice range
of adults today).
For the ancient Greeks music could only
descend from its origin on high singing began
at the highest note, descended and after a pause
began high again. They sang melodies, not
*An interval is the distance between two notes, whether
played consecutively or simultaneously.
Appendix
harmonies. Later, Greek music zigzagged down,
so to speak. Music went up for the first time with
the early Christians who sang plainsong, without
melody (that is, with most words on the same
note).
The interval of the fifth was important
until the 1100s and 1200s. The third was then
considered a dissonance. The Church considered
the fifth the pure interval until much later.
Popular secular music first used the third interval
in the 13th and 14th centuries, and it gradually
became comfortable.
In the age when fifths predominated, it
was impossible to colour music in a subjective
direction.304 With the third interval came the
ability to express major and minor moods in
music.305 All modern music is in the third interval.
This is personal self-expression, the opposite
pole to the static chanting of a child, wide-eyed
with looking not at the human heart but at the
world. Conscious, personal expressiveness is born
at puberty, and then only gradually.306 Up to
the age of 9 childrens feelings are more generic
they flash up and are gone so ideally major and
minor are not used before age 9.
The child repeats the stages of evolution of
human consciousness through which humanity
has passed. This is not a chronological repetition
but more a wandering of the soul up to and
including the consciousness of ancient Greece.
For the first nine years of life, the childs
consciousness corresponds to those of ancient
Egypt and ancient Greece, and thus pentatonic
music with the fifth interval is the most
appropriate music for children up to third grade
(ages 89). Music of the fifth interval enables
children to remain in a type of music which
was experienced in the youth of mankind.307
With neither tone C nor F (and avoiding or
downplaying the third interval), pentatonic
music with the fifth interval still has something
of a transporting quality. Although for many
adults the fifth interval is empty (because the
gods have withdrawn), it does have light, space,
objectivity and breathing room. Music of the fifth
interval is appropriate for children up to age 9
86
because it speaks to him/her where (s)he is. The
fifth interval brings a feeling of God-being in
the human much like the childs experience of
oneness, of being an inseparable part of all that
is around him/her.308 The fifth interval is open,
uncommitted and starry-eyed, it lacks tension,
sensuality and sweetness, it is vibrant and rich,
and like the child it is dreamy but not sleepy.309
This series of fifths:
can be rearranged (contracted) to suit the voice
range:
Taking from the octave above and
incorporating them as top D and top E gives a
seven-tone pentatonic scale which can be sung or
played on a kinderharp or pentatonic flute and
which for the childs ear has a warm, reassuring
quality. With these tones are four intervals of a
perfect fifth: DA, Atop E, EB and Gtop D.
A unique characteristic of this pentatonic
scale is that whatever succession of notes is played,
it sounds good. Thus a small child can experiment
with a pentatonic flute and it never sounds wrong.
The explanation is that the dense, dissonant
intervals are absent because C and F are missing.
Pentatonic music has a dreamy quality, as
if listening to it for long enough would send
one to sleep. It corresponds with the dream
consciousness we see in the young child, that
is, with the unselfconscious participation of
the child in everything around him. There are,
however, third intervals in pentatonic music and
therefore major and minor experience. Indeed
much traditional pentatonic music emphasises
 Appendix

thirds and fourths and relates strongly to a major

or minor mode. In addition, the whole range
of pentatonic music typically has the gesture of
starting at D, going up to top E and coming down
again. In other words it begins low, goes up and
finishes low. The young child, on the other hand,
Mood of the fifth songs can be pictured as a
in the long process of incarnating, is beginning
seesaw, with tone A the centre of balance.
high in the spiritual worlds and coming down to
earth, experiencing the transitions like a travelling
through fifth intervals. babies). Circling around tone A gives a song a
The most appropriate music for the young dreamy quality. All mood of the fifth music begins
child is termed mood of the fifth. It is a on tone A, weaves around tone A in a lemniscate
subsection of pentatonic music and reflects the and finishes on tone A. The predominant notes
descent in fifths. Mood in this case refers to are D, A and top E, which enable a simple, three-
something objective living within the interval. note lemniscate (for example, ADAtop EA).
The tones each have their own being with A five-note lemniscate would include G and B as
particular characteristics and each has a planetary well.
connection. Tone A we perceive as the tone
related to the sun and therefore also to Sunday
(whereas B is related to the moon and to Monday,
C to Mars and Tueday and so on). Playing only
tone A will make a classroom of children become
very quiet and can bring adults to silence. The
very first songs can be composed solely of tone
A (for example, Mill, oh Mill310) and then two A lemniscate around tone A
tones (for example, Rapunzel311), and these are
perfectly satisfying for 3- and 4-year-olds. Tone A Although there are third intervals within
is the home base for young children, their starting mood of the fifth music (such as EG and GB),
and finishing points. It is also the centre of their they are kept to the weaker beats of the bar, so
voice range today (lower than it otherwise would they are not stressed. Mood of the fifth music
be because mothers typically do not sing to their always has an aspect of moving around and not
moving progressively,
and when the music
finishes on tone A, it
is not a culmination
or resolution. This
accords with the natural
movement of young
children (up to age 7)
when their teacher leads
them in a circle they
tend to form and move
as a bunch rather than
individually forming a
circular line.

87
Appendix
Mood of the fifth music is particularly
appropriate until children leave kindergarten.
From 1st to 3rd grades (ages 69), the Waldorf
music teacher will bring pentatonic music. The
class teacher, on the other hand, may choose to
use all kinds of traditional, cultural songs as well
as pentatonic in order to bring to the children
their cultural heritage. The childrens first musical
instrument is the pentatonic interval flute played
in 1st grade, followed by the seven-note pentatonic
flute in 2nd grade. Both require a relaxed and
open embouchere.
In 3rd grade they begin the violin. After the
nine-year change the child begins to feel and
unwittingly say, I am on the ground. Music in
a key has a grounding effect, so the third interval
and diatonic music are now appropriate. Beat is
added by the teacher only around the ninth year
as the child enters the new relationship between
himself and the world. At that time also the tonic
is felt, the scale comprehended and the triads
(i.e., three-tone chords of superimposed thirds)
experienced. The child may hear and be aware of
this much earlier on, but it does not correspond to
his stage of development. As has been well known
for centuries, one can impart to the child a feeling
for the beat, the tonic, the scales and the triads
at a much earlier age, but one thereby promotes
premature sexual development.312
In recognition of this step in consciousness at
age 9, the music teacher may give children a round
to sing, so that each child must sing his own
part and hold his own against the others singing
theirs. The 9-year-old has pure soul questions that
cannot be intellectualised but can be answered by
the teacher with major and minor keys, so major
and minor experiences are introduced in 4th
grade. The 10-year-old needs to not be engulfed in
harmony that would cause a one-sided Dionysian
development (that is, a tendency in the direction
of lack of control, of anarchy). In fact in 3rd and
4th grades, some pentatonic music would still be
used, for example, English, Scottish and Irish folk
songs. Speed Bonnie Boat is one and fine for
3rd grade.
88
In 4th grade the diatonic C flute is played.
The recorder, which needs a tight embouchere,
is played in 5th and 6th grades. The 12-year-old
is so fully on the ground that it is almost as if
he is down in his feet for the child who at 11
ran nimbly all over the crowded playground, at
12 is clumsy with his feet and bumps into others
even in an uncrowded space. His consciousness
corresponds to that of the ancient Roman; for
him power, laws and rules are all-important. The
interval of the octave is now introduced and he
needs to be given great musical inspirations.
Electronically-recorded sound compared to
live music313
Both Tomatis and Steiner have shown the
larynx to be an essential part of our unified
hearing apparatus. The Eustachian tubes connect
the middle ear with the larynx so that the hearing
organs are united with the musical instrument
(the voice) inside us. What we hear is inwardly
(unconsciously) accompanied by our singing or
speaking and so becomes audible to us once more.
A note heard directly from a musical
instrument has the qualities of tone-warmth
and tone-light which depend on the physical
materials of the instrument. The warmth and
light are recognised inwardly when we hear. In
contrast, the sound from a loudspeaker consists
only of individual numbers of vibrations, so it
can produce only overtones. Its sound lacks the
high-pitched light-tone connected with matter and
the dark, warm keynote connected with form. It
gives the illusion of the experience of tone. No
technology could give soul to a loudspeaker
because it cannot produce tone-warmth or tone-
light. Electronically recorded sound is particularly
damaging to the delicate development of
childrens hearing. It is junk food for the ears.
Electronic tones isolate people and are possibly
one factor in the development of autism.
(4) A Brief History of Puppetry
The roots of puppetry are to be found all
over the world in the religious ceremonies of the
ancient civilisations. Puppetry began in antiquity

in different societies around the same time. In
each case there was a progression from human-
mask in religious ceremony to puppet-mask and
then to marionettes. The puppetry of the Native
Americans, Egyptians, and Indians stand out.
The earliest puppets appeared in the
civilisations of ancient India (72775067 bc)
and ancient Persia (50672907 bc) and were
used by priests and priestesses as a sacred and
holy means to reveal powerful mysteries of God
and the secrets of life.314 Later in India, and
for a long time, all marionettes re-enacted the
two great Sanskrit epics The Mahabatra
and The Ramayana. In a New Delhi museum
is a terracotta monkey puppet 4000 years old
from this period. The Mahabatra is the main
devotional and philosophical work of the Hindu
religion. Composed of about 90,000 couplets,
it includes The Bhagavad Gita. Gods, heroes,
villains, wars, love frailties and great deeds
abound in these two ancient epics; the powers of
humanity and of nature are represented by such
as elephant gods, buffalo demons and gods with
horses heads.315 Because it was thought taboo
to impersonate the human being, puppet drama
was developed and performed for a much longer
time in India than in any other region; finally live
drama was allowed there too. Meanwhile every
kind of puppetry was tried and developed in some
part of India.
Illustration 6. Javanese wayang kulit shadow puppets
89
Appendix
Religious themes still dominate today
in performances by both professionals and
amateurs. Plays from The Mahabatra and The
Ramayana are likely to be performed in the
grounds of a temple; articulated leather shadow
puppets (which probably led to Indonesias
Wayang tradition) may be used. The shadow
screen is simply made by joining two saris
together, so it measures 7' x 21' (2.10m x 6.30m).316
The play goes on all night and takes several
months to perform from beginning to end.
Everyone in the audience knows it by heart.317
Hinduism and puppetry spread together in
Asia. The firm hold they took in Indonesia meant
puppetry survived the Islamic conquest of 1475.318
There are two forms of wayang or shadow
theatre: Wayang golek has three-dimensional
wooden figures manipulated with rods (this may
have originated from the Bengali style of rod
puppets), and more popular is wayang kulit
which uses flat, leather figures reminiscent of
southern India.319 Shadow theatre is purest in Bali
where it still has a mystical and ceremonial aspect.
Wayang symbolises life and plays an important
role in such celebrations as weddings and
birthdays.320 Good beings are to the puppeteers
right and evil beings to his left. The figures are
2024" (5060cm) tall; a knot of string suffices for
the shoulder and elbow joints, horn rods attached
to the hands enable the arms to be moved.321 The
Appendix
Hindu characters in Indonesia enact the struggle
between good and evil, each personifying his
virtue or vice without shading or complexity.322
To these are added subordinate characters from
pre-Hindu times (possibly ancient Indonesian
gods which over time have been degraded to a
comic status) used to provide lighter moments
with themes reflecting current events. Although
the Moslem community strongly predominates
(95% of Indonesians are Moslem), the shadow
puppets are still fundamentally Hindu and are an
influential, established part of life.323
In Egypt evidence from the time of its ancient
civilisation shows that puppets then were still
firmly in the hands of the priests.324 Puppets were
found buried in the tombs of kings and queens
near the Nile.325 A small marionette theatre was
found in a Nile city of the second century ad.
Many writers of ancient Greece and ancient
Rome mention puppets. In the first century ad,
one describes a theatre in which a mystical tale of
vengeance, fire, storm and shipwreck was enacted
entirely with automatic mechanisms.326
The steadily growing Christian religion took
up puppetry between the seventh and ninth
centuries. Among the moving statuary in the
churches, Jesus was initially represented as a lamb
(the Lamb of God); later he was represented by
a man.327 Later still puppets could act out a bible
story on stage while someone stood in front,
reciting. An 11th century abbot denounced
puppets as smacking of idolatry, and by the 13th
century even the Pope was inveighing against
them but apparently without success. Puppets
had slipped firmly into the educational pattern of
the Church.328
By that time puppets were seen outside
churches as much as inside. Wandering over
Europe, showmen entertained with juggling,
mime and puppets. There is a 12th century
woodcut showing two stringed figures fighting in
armour and operated by two boys.329 Hand puppet
booths with castle turrets and crenelated walls
between are seen in (manuscript) illuminations.
Puppetry became an integral part of medieval
religious drama.330 There were two particular
90
advantages to the Church of using puppets: They
avoided the vulgarity of live actors and enabled
common people to learn the eternal truths.331 In
summary, in the Middle Ages puppets entered the
Church, spread and developed over a long period
and were eventually expelled from it.
Religious plays began in France, spread to
England and were at their height in the 15th and
16th centuries. A typical miracle show entitled
The Mysteries of Mid-August was performed
in France at Dieppe in 1443 and every year on
August 15th for the Feast of the Assumption.332
There were marionettes and moving statues
that rolled their eyes or nodded. Together they
marvellously portrayed the Virgins assumption
into heaven. Some angels were life-size, others
stopped the priests snuffing out the candles at
the end and made everyone laugh. There was
even a stringed clown. These plays began with
excerpts from the Bible or the lives of saints but in
England developed into great cycles of plays. Such
plays and the Nativity story enacted by puppets
were later played by human beings. Christmas
puppet plays took place in Poland, Byelorussia and
the Ukraine, among other places.
In the 15th century arose morality plays
dramas in verse with the vices personified. They
were played by puppets, monks and actors.
English groups toured abroad from the 15th
century onwards using marionettes for the devils,
monsters and flying animals.
Certain puppets became too theatrical or
too vulgar for the Church. Their clowning and
buffoonery meant that the whole play was moved
out into the public square, and religious drama
gradually made the transition to secular drama.333
The puppet shows of Shakespearean England were
called motions and were mainly the banished
morality plays emphasising the slapstick and the
bawdy.334
In Italy from the 16th to 18th centuries,
besides the religious mystery plays, a comic
tradition of character, farce, burlesque and
improvisation evolved termed the Commedia
dell arte that could be excellently portrayed by
puppets. One character was a braggart and coward

called Pulcinella, destined for great fame. By 1573
Italian puppetry had come to England. Although
Cromwell and the Puritans closed all theatres for
eighteen years from 1642, puppet theatres were
allowed to continue. In Germany the legend of
Dr. Faustus came into being and became the
greatest puppet play of Europe. That Goethe had
made a written interpretation of Faustus meant
that puppetry was lifted off the streets and into
the theatre.
By the 18th century a certain famous puppet
would appear in almost every show. In France
it was Polichinelle (who had evolved from the
Italian Pulcinella). In the Ottoman Empire it was
Karaghioz. In Germany it was (Dr.) Faust(us).
In England it was Punch (via Pulcinella, alias
Polichinelle), and Punch became a hand puppet
which best portrayed his belligerent character.
By the turn of the 19th century, Punch was
completely English and fixed with a particular
costume, a big nose and a hunched back.335
In Italy the famous puppet was Orlando.
In the eighth century a Frankish knight named
Roland served on the Breton border under
Charlemagne. By the 11th century his story had
become a legend told in The Song of Roland, in
which he was portrayed as being Charlemagnes
nephew, and the Basques were depicted as
Saracens. Roland had a sword called Durlindana
with which he could wield magic. During the
Illustration 7. Charlemagnes Council, National Museum of Puppetry, Sicily
(Orlando is second from the left.)
91
Appendix
Renaissance an Italian, Ludovico Ariosto, wrote
an epic poem entitled, Orlando Furioso,
a mix of history, fantasy and imagination
in which Orlando (i.e., Roland) is furioso
from frustration because his love, Angelica,
marries another. It is a Sicilian marionette epic
of 500 plays, a rich feast of giants, dragons,
witches, ogres, eagles, magic swords, intrigues,
transformations, heroics, betrayals, loves requited
and unrequited, and deaths noble and ignoble.336
In Catania, Sicily, the stunning marionettes
were 45 feet tall, weighed 80 lb. each and had
brass-plated armour; the head joined to the body
by a hook so that a sideswipe could cause the
helmeted head to hit the floor with a clank. The
very proud, regal style of the knights dictates an
elaborate language of gesture to help convey their
moods and feelings. The back of the hand to the
cheek means weeping, the palm to the face means
thought.337 In whatever country Orlando was
played, Charlemagnes court was played by local,
native characters. In France in 1920 there were
69 marionette companies performing it as The
Paladins of France.
In China there are marionettes, hand puppets
and rod puppets, but the most highly stylised
and beautiful are fine leather shadow puppets.
Shadow plays began there between the seventh
and ninth centuries and reached the height of
their developent in the 11th century. The most
Appendix
sophisticated marionettes in the world must be
Chinese, with up to 40 strings they average 24"
(60cm) high and exhibit a wide range of expressive
movements with the mouth, eyes, individual
fingers and even the eyebrows moving.338 Many
plays have female heroes. In the 20th century
rod puppets came to the fore. Classical Chinese
drama continued in these plays with stories of
heroism, battles, betrayals, unrequited love and
women wronged and saved. Since the arrival of
Communism additional plays featured traitors,
foreign invaders, depraved and unjust emperors,
greedy landowners, stupid officials and other
enemies of the common people.339 The other side
of the Communist coin was depicted in Eastern
Europe where clandestine puppetry flourished
showing political satire rather than the official
news.
In Japan, puppetry began as late as the tenth
century. It has a tradition of hand, string and
rod puppetry. A puppetry style uniquely Japanese
termed Bunraku evolved in the 17th and 18th
centuries, and it is this that is most famous
abroad. Each figure is 34' (1.051.35m)
tall. The main puppeteer is fully visible, holding
in front of him the puppet that is dressed in a
kimono with voluminous sleeves. With his left
hand he controls the head so that it nods and
turns, and with levers he moves the mouth, eyes
and eyebrows; with his right hand he controls
the right arm, thumb and fingers. Two black-
Illustration 8. Vietnamese Water Puppets
92
hooded assistants move the left arm and the legs.
In the 16th century puppetry was used to spread
Buddhism, but late in that century it became
secularised and was transferred to the courts of
Kobe and Osaka. Around the 17th century was a
time of such prosperity that lower-caste tradesmen
could attend the Bunraku plays which concern
the life of the nobility; it was their one chance to
have a taste of court culture.
In the courts of India, China and the
Ottoman Empire, puppetry was taken so seriously
that the most talented playwrights, poets and
designers were employed. In Europe, however,
puppetry remained a folk art usually performed
by a wandering showman and his family. Even
so, in 17th century Italy and Paris, a few famous
men composed and produced some very popular
puppet operas. In Hungary, Haydn composed
several marionette operas for court performances.
For most of the 18th century, a shadow puppet
theatre was extremely popular in Paris. In 1862
Bizet, together with other musicians, artists,
writers and poets, worked for a whole year to
produce puppet shows. The idea of getting
together for fun was new. Others tried it in
Munich, Berlin, Rome and New York, resulting in
performances for sophisticated audiences.
Late 19th century Europe saw spectacular
plays with all kinds of trick effects, such as
cannons roaring and ships sinking in real flames.
Some puppetry troupes performed for a thousand
people. Some toured Europe, others the world. In
the United States puppets travelled the vaudeville
circuit, some with a puppet orchestra and puppet
spectators.
In the 20th century the general public found
that puppets could create more than surprise
and laughter. Dramatic impact through story
and character became as important as theatrical
effects, and the mechanical-marvel style of
puppetry began to diminish in importance. Rod
puppets appeared in Europe, though the best
were made in Russia. Nevertheless, marionettes
remained the most popular in Czechoslovakia
alone there were more than 3200 amateur
marionette companies. During the time of Nazi
 Appendix

occupation there, they performed illegally as part

of the resistance, even in concentration camps.
In Europe in 1919 the architect, Walter
Gropius, founded a school which had a profound
effect on most 20th century design. Called the
Bauhaus, it was founded on the revolutionary
principles that : (1) function was to be the
criterion of design, (2) art and architecture could
be fused, (3) in the machine age craftsmen must
run the machines, and (4) students should create
and not simply copy someone elses creations.
There was much opposition from artists and
politicians alike. It changed the approach to
design, including that of puppetry, in the entire
Western world. Working and teaching there were
Klee, Kandinsky, Schawinsky and Schlenner, all
of whom influenced puppetry. In 1933 Hitler
came to power and suppressed the Bauhaus
enquiring art, as did Stalin later, suppressing the
very important beginnings of stage design Illustration 9. Rod puppet from Mali
in Russia.340
In 1928 the Union Internationale de
Marionettes (UNIMA) was established to promote the puppets be dressed in every detail like the
international cooperation and friendship. In the local women in the audience so they can identify
US in 1933, puppetry was greatly promoted by with them. Preparations for the first multi-party
Tony Sarg whose nationwide tour and Chicago elections in Tanzania involved the use of a lifesize
Fair performances were seen by over three million puppet of a woman to show that voting day would
people. However from the 1930s, people preferred mean choice, but also long hours in a queue
to go to the cinema and from the 1950s to stay which would mean an inability to work or feed
home and watch television, so puppetry audiences the family that day. Finally, in Waldorf schools the
declined dramatically. Nevertheless puppetry is world over sublime puppet shows are performed
still popular in the East. In Vietnam spectacular of the fairy tales.
shows are performed by water puppets, the
puppeteers waist-deep in the water and hidden by
a screen; a dragon with fireworks exploding from (5) Fairy Tales and Stories by Season
its mouth must look very dramatic after dark.341 In the kindergarten a path of joy is walked
From sacred beginnings, puppetry over many through the seasons relishing the changes on
centuries has sunk to the profane. Nevertheless outdoor walks, the nature table and in nature
the 20th century saw the pendulum begin to stories. Fairy tales are chosen which reflect the
swing back with many beneficial and innovative mood of the season. Michaelmas comes at the
ways of using puppets. They perform in shelters time of dusk in the year, courage is needed to face
for the homeless. In hospitals they help children the oncoming darkness both then and again at
to understand the treatment they are about to Advent. Christmas comes at midnight in the year,
receive. In some less industrialised countries, with the birth of the light and the beginnings of
the World Health Organisation uses puppets in its growth. Easter falls at the dawn of the year and
health education for women; there it is essential has the theme of resurrection.

93
Appendix

The kindergarten teacher in working with the Christmas and Epiphany

festivals aims to reach the children on a will level
only and not on a soul-feeling level, as that would
be inappropriate for their age. Certain fairy tales
and stories are particularly appropriate at certain
times of year; some suggestions follow.
The Legend of Baboushka from Festivals,
Families and Food
The Three Gnomes and the Christ Child
Christmas Legends Winter, Wynstones
King Caspar and the Lions Den

Autumn Winter
Pancake Mill from Let Us Form a Ring, Acorn Mother Holle Grimm
Hill Anthology Little Hut in the Forest (February e.g.,
Sweet Porridge (a tale of abundance welcoming Valentines Day) Grimm
the young newcomers) Grimm The Star-Money Grimm (Lent)
The Donkey (a tale to shed pressures of The Three Spinners Grimm
upbringing) Grimm White Snow, Bright Snow Alvin Tresselt
The Princess and the Flaming Castle (e.g., The Big Snow Berta and Elmer Hader
SeptOct before Harvest festival) transl. The Three Little Men in the Wood Grimm
Joan Almon, Let Us Form a Ring, Acorn Hill Ollies Ski Trip Elsa Beskow
Anthology. The Snow Maiden Plays for Puppets and
Rumpelstiltskin autumn and Halloween Marionettes, Bronya Zahlingen
Grimm
Spindlewood Let Us Form a Ring, Acorn Hill Easter
Anthology Little Red Riding Hood (Little Redcap) (also
Three Little Pigs Lent) Grimm
Tom Tit Tot Little Snow White (usually too long for
The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids Grimm kindergarten) Grimm
Three Billy Goats Gruff Spindrift, Wynstones
Press Spring
The Frog Prince Grimm
Advent Snow-White and Rose-Red Grimm
The Star-Money Grimm Little Red Riding Hood (Little Red Cap) Grimm
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (perhaps too The Water of Life Grimm
long for kindergarten) Grimm The Sea Hare Grimm
The Golden Key Grimm The Seven Ravens Grimm
The Elves and the Shoemaker Grimm The Six Swans Grimm
Marys Child Jack and the Beanstalk
Hansel and Gretel Grimm
The Hut in the Forest Grimm Whitsun
Allerleirauh Grimm Jorinda and Joringel (for 7-year-olds) Grimm
Marys Journey to the Stars Winter, Wynstones Cinderella (for 7-year-olds) Grimm
Saint Nicholas Winter, Wynstones
The Tomten and Christmas in the Stable both Summer
by Astrid Lindgren The Queen Bee Grimm
The Shepherd Helga Aichinger Ladybird
The Little Advent Book Ida Bodhatta Our Ladys Little Glass Grimm
The Animals Christmas Rapunzel Grimm

94

For a birthday
Little Briar Rose Grimm
(6) Some Possible Interpretations of
Fairy Tale Images
Only in the light of anthroposophy and with
an understanding of the evolution of human
consciousness can the profound significance of
the fairy tales be recognised. Many fairy tales
begin with a king and queen who can reflect the
time many thousands of years ago when mankind
lived in Paradise. A child representing a new soul
faculty faces trials, often in a forest representing
our ordeals in the current materialistic culture.
Finally, a long time in the future, all is well and
Paradise regained. Thus the whole evolution of
human consciousness past, present and future
can be contained in one, short fairy tale.
The story is like a door that can open up to
the meaning behind it. That meaning is a reality.
The need is to get beyond the door, to attain the
reality. With the strict provisos that every noun
is an image not a concept and that, as already
stated, the fairy tale be understood as a unity and
not symbolically, the following suggestions are
made as a possible help to begin unravelling its
meaning. (As stated earlier, every character is an
aspect within each of us.)
King and Queen two complementary, higher
phases of oneself at a time in the long distant
past
Poor, humble parents a later stage of humanity;
may show they had already descended from
the spiritual world and they no longer have the
resources to go forward (as in The Elves and
the Shoemaker)
Longing longing for a child may be a longing for
a new soul capacity that enables the evolution
of human consciousness to continue. A donkey,
for example, longs to play the lute. (All animals
serve from the physical level of their being, with
the longing to be ennobled and transformed
through the arts.)
Child always something new, usually a new soul
faculty, the future, the way forward
95
Appendix
Donkey long-suffering, foolish, stubborn,
earthly, carrying heavy loads over rocky earth;
can be a picture of the physical body, a middle-
aged feeling
Dog loyal, instinctive, orderly, predictable;
a creature of regular habits related to our
etheric/habit body, to our life forces
Cat a picture of astrality with irregular,
unexpected movements; related to the night
when it becomes especially active; can be a
picture of passion and sexuality and also of
intelligence
Cockerel announces the dawn, an awakening;
may be a judge, the conscience
House always signifies our human organisation
(our body)
Tree can be a picture of the sensory branching
of our nerve-sense organism
Frog lives in both worlds water (fluid, etheric)
and the dry, physical world; may bring news
from that other, etheric world; may be able to
foretell the future
Woods often a picture of the physical, sense
world
Stepmother a force within the soul, materialistic
thinking; wants quick results without effort,
unable to realise that fruits come from an
inner, qualitative walking of a path; may place
young, developing aspect of soul in jeopardy
Shoe a picture of how we walk the earth and
live our destiny; a glass slipper suggests being so
pure as to be transparent
Water the fluid, etheric world
Fish a picture of what lives deep in the fluid,
etheric world
A gold item/person picture of something noble,
divine, perhaps wisdom-filled
Raven big, heavy, physical bird, weighed down
by matter, dark, powerful figure (only recently
do they symbolically portend death or disaster);
the first stage for an initiate, the one who
brought news of the outside, everyday world
into the temple; goes to what glitters, the
material world, and steals it; a picture of the
descent of human consciousness, clairvoyance
ends and a period of darkness begins
Appendix
Glass mountain a picture of the crystalline,
mineral thinking into which humanity has
descended
Ring eternal, a promise, a covenant with the
spiritual world
The end of the world (a place) the end of the
sense world
Well water is the medium through which life
can exist; can be a wellspring of life
Spinning means spinning thoughts, spinning
the thread of thinking, the thread of destiny
To go up in a house, tower or castle means to
go up and up in the human body to the old,
mineral brain, up into the thinking where the
child begins to go at puberty
A right moment this can happen when
wisdom can work itself out. An example occurs
in Briar Rose: After a hundred years, the
hedge opens of its own accord.
A wedding wholeness, unity, a coming together
of soul and spirit, of the advanced soul and
advanced, conscious forces of thinking, a final
resolution in the future
Inheriting the kingdom following the
unification of advanced soul and advanced
spirit, Paradise is regained.
(7) Choosing Fairy Tales for Different
Ages342 By Joan Almon
Among the fairy tales there are stories of
varying degrees of complexity. At the simplest
level there is Sweet Porridge. Children enjoy
hearing of the little pot, so full of abundance,
which overflows for lack of the right word.
A considerably more complicated story is the
beautiful French tale of Perronik, the simpleton
in quest of the grail who must overcome seven
difficult obstacles. The latter is a tale for the
elementary school child, perhaps just as he is
leaving the world of fairy tales around age 9.
At this age, the children themselves have a sense
of lifes eternal abundance, which one child
expressed to her mother in this way when told
she did not have enough time to take her out to
play: But Mother, I have lots of time. Ill give you
some.
96
In almost every fairy tale there is either
a problem that must be solved, such as how
to get the porridge pot to stop cooking, or a
confrontation with evil, which can take many
forms such as the Queen in Snow-White or the
various monsters which Perronik encounters. The
milder the problem, the more appropriate the tale
for younger children, and conversely, the greater
the evil, the more appropriate the tale is for older
children.
Another aspect of fairy tales is that the hero
or heroine must undergo certain trials or go on
a complex journey before succeeding in his or
her quest. In the original version of the Three
Little Pigs, the pig is nearly tricked three times
before he is able to overcome the wolf. Three is
a number which frequently arises in relationship
to the challenges of the fairy tale. In this case the
tasks are not portrayed as very ominous, and the
pig handles them with a good deal of humour,
making it a tale well-loved by 4-year-olds. In the
Seven Ravens the daughter must first journey
to the sun, the moon and the stars in order to
restore her brothers to human form. This is a tale
which speaks well to 5- and 6-year-olds. An even
more complex tale is the beautiful Norwegian tale
entitled, East of the Sun and West of the Moon.
Here too, the heroine must go on a great journey
to redeem her prince, and the journey takes her
first to the homes of three wise women. She is
then aided by each of the four winds. Yet even
when the north wind blows her to the castle east
of the sun and west of the moon, her work is not
completed and she is further tested before she is
able to marry the prince. This is not a tale for the
kindergarten, but rather one for the first grade or
beyond, when childrens own inner struggles grow
more complex and when they are nourished by
the more complex fairy tales.
With these thoughts in mind, I would
like to divide some of the tales commonly
told in Waldorf kindergartens into categories
of complexity. This is a somewhat dangerous
business, for the fairy tales are so alive that
they do not rest comfortably in one category or
another. Even as I divide them up, I find myself

constantly switching them from one category to
another. In the end one makes ones decisions
very much with a particular group of children or
an individual child in mind. Please accept these
divisions lightly, as mere indications, and take the
time to develop your own judgments in this area.
You may find it helpful to read a few stories from
each category as a means of understanding the
different levels of complexity.
1 The 3-year-olds in the nursery or mixed-age
kindergarten are very satisfied with little nature
stories, or with a simple tale such as Sweet
Porridge. The older threes are often ready to
hear the sequential tales such as the tale of the
turnip. One finds many tales of this sort which
have a strong pattern of repetition and order.
There are also traditional songs which fall into
this category such as I Had a Cat That Pleased
Me or Had Glad Ya, a song sung during the
Jewish festival of Passover. Such sequential stories
have the added advantage of being relatively easy
for a beginner storyteller to learn. A collection of
tales for this age group includes the following:
Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Russian)
Little Louse and Little Flea (Spindrift)
Little Madam (Spindrift)
Sweet Porridge (Grimm)
The Gingerbread Man
The Hungry Cat (Norwegian, in Plays for
Puppets)
The Johnny Cake (English)
The Mitten
The Turnip (Russian)
2 In the next category the tales are slightly
more complex, but the overall mood is usually
cheerful and without too much sorrow or struggle.
The fours and young fives are usually quite
comfortable with these tales:
Billy Goats Gruff (Norwegian)
Mashenka and the Bear (Russian, Plays for
Puppets)
Pancake Mill (Acorn Hill Anthology)
The Shoemaker and the Elves (Grimm)
97
Appendix
The Wolf and Seven Kids (Grimm)
Three Little Pigs (English)
3 In the next category come many of the tales
which we normally associate with the term fairy
tale and which we think of in relation to 5- and
6-year-olds. These tales contain more challenge
and more detail. The main character often sets
out in the world with a simple task to perform,
such as in the Miller Boy and the Pussy Cat.
Although obstacles are encountered, they do not
weigh too heavily on the soul of the individual.
Such tales include:
Bremen Town Musicians (Grimm)
Frog Prince (Grimm)
Golden Goose (Grimm)
Hansel and Gretel (Grimm)
Hut in the Forest (Grimm)
Little Briar Rose (Grimm)
Little Red Cap/Little Red Riding Hood
(Grimm)
Mother Holle (Grimm)
Princess in the Flaming Castle (Overview of
Waldorf Kindergarten)
Queen Bee (Grimm)
Rumpelstiltskin (Grimm)
Snow Maiden (Russian, Plays for Puppets)
Snow-White and Rose-Red (Grimm)
Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs (Grimm)
Spindle, Shuttle and Needle (Grimm)
Star Money (Grimm)
The Donkey (Grimm)
The Seven Ravens (Grimm)
4 The final group are those fairy tales which
are well suited for the 6-year-olds who are making
the transfer to first grade. This is a time of stress
for children as they lose their baby teeth and sense
a departure from the heart of early childhood.
(Fortunately they still have a few years before they
make their final fall from Paradise.) Tales in
which characters have a personal experience of
suffering or sorrow meet this new phase of inner
development in the children. Often these tales are
not told in the kindergarten at all but are left for
first grade.
Appendix
Brother and Sister (Grimm)
Cinderella (Grimm)
Jorinda and Joringel (Grimm)
Rapunzel (Grimm)
A frequent problem which troubles
kindergarten teachers is how to select tales for a
mixed-age group. If there are 3-year-olds present
as well as 6-year-olds, will the more advanced tales
harm the little ones? My own experience and
that of other teachers is that this is not a problem
provided the story is appropriate for some of
the children in the group. This is an interesting
phenomenon which seems to work as follows. In
a mixed-age group with children from three to
six, one can choose a tale for the 5- and 6-year-
olds, and the 3- and 4-year-olds will be attentive.
They may seem less focussed than they are with a
simple tale, but they rarely grow restless (though
it sometimes helps to seat the youngest ones near
the teacher or assistant).
On the other hand if one would tell the same
complex tale to a group of only 3- and 4-year-olds,
one would find that they do not attend to it well
and easily lose interest. It is as if there is no one in
the group who can carry the story for the others.
In a mixed-age group one can also create a balance
in the tales by telling some that are appropriate
for the younger children. The older children
generally do not get bored with the simpler tales,
and they will laugh at the humorous parts while
the little ones listen with full seriousness.
When choosing a fairy tale, another factor
to take into account is whether a fairy tale is
generally well known in the society, even if it is
known in an incorrect form. When a tale is well
known, children often seem to be ready to hear it
at a younger age than they otherwise might be.
The final consideration, and probably the
most important one, is the storytellers own
relationship to the story. Sometimes a storyteller
loves a tale so much that the story may be told to
children who are generally too young for it. It is as
if the storytellers love of the tale builds a bridge to
it. Thus, I knew a teacher who loved The Seven
Ravens so much she told it year after year to her
98
class of 3- and 4-year-olds, a feat which I would not
undertake. When this love of fairy tales is coupled
with an understanding of them on the part of the
storyteller, doors are opened to the whole realm
of life in which fairy tales are true and live forever.
In the telling of fairy tales, we too are nourished
and brought back into this realm. Rudolf Steiner
describes the fairy tales very beautifully when he
says, Much deeper than one might imagine lie
the sources whence flow genuine, true fairy tales
that speak their magic throughout all centuries of
human evolution.
(8) Colour Indications for Marionettes
gathered from Freya Jaffke, Margaret Meyerkort and
Alice Gorge
The King golden yellow dress, purple robe,
golden crown
Old King purple dress, mauve robe, golden
crown
Wise King blue dress, golden robe, golden
crown
Courageous King red dress, golden robe, golden
crown
The Queen rose or golden dress, blue cloak,
golden crown
Old Queen red-violet dress, purple/blue robe,
golden crown
Wicked Queen sensuous colours: red, orange,
green
Princess light blue or pink dress, golden or white
cape, crown, pink dress, paler pink cape, golden
hair or crown
Prince golden dress, yellow/gold/red cape,
golden band, medium blue/red dress, golden
cape or stole, crown
Nobleman dark blue, with mauve or purple hat
and cape
Noblewoman dark blue, with mauve or purple
shawl or cloak
Young Girl rose or pink or peach blossom dress,
pale blue cloak
Mother Mother Mary colours: red violet to old
rose, or red with blue on top of it, yet softened
(spiritualised)
 Appendix

Father warm, earthly colours, reds toward the Actions:

purple, greens, browns Blue withdraws.
Maid green and brown, with dress, apron, and Red presses forward.
cap/kerchief Green inclines to the peaceful.
Cook, Kitchen Boy white dress, white apron, Yellow wants to dance.
chefs hat or cap
Conversation of Colours:
Wicked Dwarf clashing, bright colours: bright
red and yellow happy together
green (earth) and red cap (thinking) or grey and
clashing yellows red and blue courageous, serious and strong
Witch cold, greyish colours, brown and grey together
rags, orange and green scarf, red, yellow, green yellow and blue secretive, create green
dress, cape black and blue sad and silent
Bad Fairy darkish grey dress and grey veils black and red burn with anger
Stepmother green dress, clashing orange cape or blue and violet humble and pious
kerchief, turquoise dress with scarlet cape
Reds talk loudly.
Animals be true to the nature of the animal, its
Blues talk softly, always modest and unassuming.
qualities and its gestures, to find the colour and
Green is dependable (but depending on shade).
form; not an exact replica, not too formed or
Violet is festive.
articulated
Yellow is joyful, helpful.
Colour Use in the Kindergarten Black is silent (use sparingly, if necessary at all).
Prince (also good brother) green/yellow/orange Further Colour Suggestions (for
Princess pale yellow with pink/fuchsia toymaking)344
King wine/purple
Courageous king mainly bright red and yellow
Queen/Mother medium blue/fuchsia
Old king or queen purple, mauve and gold
Older person light blue/lavender
Prince blue, red, gold
Witch light green or kelly green/purple
Princess light blue, pink, gold
Jealous princess (false princess) peach/lavender
Noble knight blue with bold red and yellow
Lazy brother light blue/light green
Nobleman dark blue, mauve, purple
Kindly woman red, yellow, green
Every story has its own colour, its own meaning.
Wicked woman dark blue, red, green and black
Yellow is cheerful, happy, radiant but also
Witch black, green and red
magnificent.
Devil red and black Fire fairy red, yellow
Blue is shy, yearning, repellent (if icy), reserved.
Evil character black and green
Green is peaceful, calm, joyful and fresh.
Gnome green, brown, grey
Orange is friendly, brave and vigorous.
Water fairy blues, green, purple
Magenta is loyal, festive and majestic.
Air fairy turquoise, yellow, pink
Colour Suggestions343
The Temperaments: each colour in various
degrees
Choleric red
Phlegmatic green
Melancholic blue and shades
Sanguine yellow

99
Appendix

(9) Directions for Tabletop (Free-standing) Puppets

Head Or B
Prepare a cotton gauze tube with cotton gauze For a perfect
tubing (or make a tube yourself). Take a length of crease-free face, take
tubing, say 35cm x 3.6cm, sew a gathering thread a rectangle of cotton
about 0.8cm from one end, pull up tight and knot interlock about 20cm
the thread, then turn inside out. From carded x 16cm with the fabric
stuffing wool, take two wide pieces (e.g., 25cm x grain running parallel
10cm), lay one across the other to form a cross to the short side. With
pins (preferably harge- Head
and put aside. Make a firm sphere of wool for the
head by taking a long piece of wool (e.g., 100cm headed) attach the 16cm
x 5cm) and beginning at one end carefully and side to the back of the
with pressure roll and turn, roll and turn until head. Stretch it across
the whole length of wool has been made into a the face and round to
very firm sphere. Put the sphere down into the the back again. One at a time remove the pins
centre of the cross and bring up the four arms of and put them in again to hold fabric in place. Let
the cross around it; hold it tightly at the neck and fabric overlap about 1cm, cut off any extra. Tie
smooth the head into a nice sphere. Insert it into a thread around the neck so the neck is the size
the cotton gauze tube right up to the closed end. you want. If neck is too narrow, insert more wool
Check that head circumference is approximately under skin fabric and then tie the thread round
20cm (tighten if too big; if too small, remove from the neck. Sew with small stitches from the neck
tube and add more wool). Tie it tightly at the neck up and remove pins. Fold fabric on top of head so
with strong thread (e.g., button or embroidery it lies nicely flat, cut off extra fabric if necessary,
thread). The remaining part of the tube has some pin in place and sew.
wool in it; add more wool so it forms a body/
torso, then sew across the end of the tube to keep Body
that wool in. Cut a rectangle of
wool felt for a man,
Face e.g., 23cm x 14cm,
Either A for a woman, e.g.,
Take a square of, e.g., cotton interlock (slightly 24cm x 12cm, for a
stretch) fabric, c. 25cm x 25cm. Fold in half twice child, e.g., 20cm x
and put a pin to mark the centre, open out again. 11cm. Sew the short
Decide which is the front of the head and hold sides together with
that towards you. Place fabric over head and hold a backstitch to form
at the neck, with the fabric grain vertical over the a tube. Turn the tube inside
face. Smooth the face, moving the creases to the out. Sew a gathering stitch
sides and back of the neck where they will not around one end 1cm from the
show later. Wind a strong thread tightly round edge. Put the head up into the
the neck and tie fairly tightly with a reef knot at tube until it just comes out the
the back remember the more tightly you tie, the other end. Pull the gathering
more creases there are! thread tight at the neck; keep
Stones hidden by
it tight with a pin. Put pins to felt circle base
hold head to body. Sew neck to

100

body all the way round with very small, invisible
stitches beginning at the back of the neck. Stuff
the body with extra wool until it looks and feels
right, balances well and will not easily fall over.
A circle of felt sewn onto the bottom is optional.
Small stones wrapped in wool can be put in the
bottom near the edge to keep it upright. The strip
of lead weights used at the bottom of curtains
can be sewn onto the base circle instead.
Hair
Wool roving /tops/ fleece can be pinned
onto the head and sewn with a few small stitches.
A hat/bonnet/cap may be sewn on first, then hair
is sewn only in a few places. Knitting wool can
be pinned onto the head and sewn on instead of
roving.
Appendix
Arms
These are optional. Take a long piece of wire,
e.g., 42+ cm, bend it in two places as in diagram.
Holding the wire against the back of the puppet,
bend it into the shape of arms, twist the wire ends
round the wire.* Fold two rectangles of skin fabric
and sew to make hands, tum inside out, put over
wire and secure tightly at wrist. Cut a rectangle of
felt for the sleeves, e.g., 5cm wide, long enough to
cover all the wire from wrist to wrist. Fold fabric
over wire and stitch. You may need to stitch wrist
to sleeve inside so hands cannot come off. Make
two vertical cuts/slits in the body in the sides
halfway between front and back. Bend the arms
in a curve. Insert one hand and sleeve into one slit
and push it around the back until it comes out at
the other side. Adjust to make arms equal length.
Bend arms into position if necessary.
Head to body
ratio
1:2 for child
puppets and
young audience
Otherwise
1:2 or
1:3
101
Appendix

(10) Directions for making silk marionettes

Wide-necked Narrow-necked

The narrow-necked style has a string below
the back of its neck so that it can nod its head, for
example, when speaking; it is very sensitive and so
needs an experienced puppeteer or one prepared
to practise. It is easier to give a wrinkle-free face
to the wide-necked version. The broken line shows
the position of the body hidden inside.
To make the head
Take a 12"/30cm length of stretch cotton
tubing (available from a chemist/drugstore) of
width 2 and 1/8 inches/5cm (i.e., circumference
11cm). Close one end by tying a thread around or
sew across the end, pull to gather up and stitch.
Turn the tube inside out and put aside. Using
carded stuffing wool/batting, take two pieces each
7"/18cm long, 22" /57cm wide, place one on
top of the other to form a cross, put aside. (For
the wide-necked style, the arms of the cross should
be longer so as to create part or all of the neck.)
Take a piece of the same wool batting, 36"/90cm
long and, say, 12"/35cm wide. Starting at one
end, roll and turn, roll and turn until the whole
length has become a sphere. (For the wide-necked
style, stop rolling before the end; the extra will
form part of the neck.) Place the sphere in the
centre of the cross, bring the arms of the cross
around the sphere and smooth the head into a
nice sphere (with no wool protruding for a neck
if narrow-necked style). The sphere is next placed
into the far end of the cotton tube, smooth and
squeeze if necessary until the shape is a nice
sphere. The head should be firm enough to hold
its shape but does not need to be very firm as it
will not have rough treatment. Use strong thread
to tie tightly around the neck.
Body
Next, a body
(hidden later) is added
so the figure can sit
without collapsing.
Take a 15"/45cm
length of wool batting,
fold it into three and Proportions
tuck a weight such as
a lead fishing weight
or small stone (e.g.,
1/3 oz/10g) inside
one fold. Wind the
other third round and round, moving towards the
stone-weighted end. Insert into the tubing below
the head so that the weight is at the bottom end.
Sew a gathering thread around the tubing near
the end, turn the very end inside, out of sight,
pull the thread tight and finish off.
Clothes
If the head and clothing are one colour: Use silk
of at least 10 mommi weight if possible, or use
two layers of 5 mommi. Take a large square (or
circular) piece of silk (e.g., 26"30"/6575cm), fold

102
 Appendix

in half twice and put in a pin to mark the centre; Garment layers may be best put onto first
unfold. Place the head in the centre and bring the body, then neck in reverse order, i.e., outermost
fabric around it, hold it at the neck, choose the tunic first, then dress, then undergarment/sleeves;
part to be the face, then minimise facial wrinkles they are then sewn in place undermost first.
somewhat by moving folds towards the back, tie a
String
thread tightly around the neck. If wished, a half- Hands
circle of silk can be attached at the top of the head Usual
For the usual style
as a veil; it can be attached at the wrist as well. A
take a small piece of
double veil can be made with two silks of different
silk, e.g., circular or
colours, e.g. a thin, 5 mommi silk underneath
square (say, 2"/6cm
and a silk chiffon outside it. A cape is made by
square). Take a weight
attaching a half-circle to the back of the neck; it
such as a spherical
can be attached at the wrist also. Make hands of
lead ball used for
the same, main colour. Add hair if wished, using
fishing or a stone (e.g.,
coloured wool roving/tops.
1/3oz/10g), wrap it in
If the head is a different colour to clothing: Choose
a little wool, and put it
an appropriate (flesh?) colour for head and hands.
in the centre of the silk;
Take a 9"/25cm square piece of silk for a head
bring the silk round it
2"/7.5cm diameter, fold in half twice and put Fairy
and tie it tightly. There
in a pin to mark the centre, unfold. Place the
is no real need to hem
head in the centre of the silk and bring the fabric
the cut edges of silk
around it, choose the part to be the face then
clothes because they do
minimise wrinkles somewhat by moving folds
not get rough use, so
towards the back, tie the neck tightly at the back
simply turn in the edge
with matching thread. Keep the piece of silk for
of the silk and fasten
the hands safely till needed. A veil or cape can be
the hand with pins
made as above and added at any time.
in position (halfway
Main dress between the bottom of the
back and the bottom of the Simplest
Take a square or circular piece of silk (e.g., front) so that only the hand
26"/65cm square). Fold it in half twice, then cut protrudes. Stitch it firmly
a small central cross. Carefully put body through at the wrist. The hands will
this central hole, only enlarging the hole a little appear to be a long way from
if absolutely necessary. Turn in the rough edge of the head. You should be
silk, somewhat, at the neck and stitch firmly. able to lift a hand up over
the head to touch where
Tunic/ tabard would be the opposite ear
Take a rectangle of silk (e.g., 26"/65cm x (like a child ready to enter
23cm), cut a cross or narrow hole in the centre, 1st grade/c. age 6!). If when close-up the arms
put the body and main dress through the hole. seem long, then to the audience the gestures will
Stitch the tunic neck hole in blanket stitch or with look right. If the main dress was made from a
a gathering stich. Put the body and main dress circle of silk, then insert the hand weight under
through the hole. Tighten the gathering stitch if the silk at the side of the body, try tying it about
used. Sew the tunic at the back of the neck to stop 2"/5cm from the edge and check if the arm is
it from sliding round. long enough for the hand to touch the opposite

103
Appendix
ear position. Shape the hand of a fairy to be long,
narrow and a little pointed. A weight is probably
not needed. Whereas the head-to-body proportion
of human adults is 1:8, it is said that of a fairy
is 1:12, so some would give a fairy a particularly
small head. For a marionette such as a giant, King
Winter or the Morning Star, the simplest form
no hand at all is fine; the string is put in under
the fold between front and back, after turning
under the edge.
Stringing a marionette options
For children nine years old or more, the
strings should be transparent (fishing line is fine).
The strings should be visible for younger children
in grades 1 and 2 (ages 68) and kindergarten.
(Younger children who cannot yet follow a story
should wait till they are older.) Use a thin, strong
thread such as white, beige or grey linen, cotton
or silk.
A single head string is fine, for example, for
an all-red fairy, bringing the colour red to the
kindergarten for painting today and also for a
puppet for children themselves to use in their
free play. (In this last case it may also be given a
hidden, flat-bottomed base so the child can rest
his hand and arm when he gets tired.) Place a pin
at the very top of the head. Thread a long needle
with a very long thread (e.g., 20"/50cm at least), tie
a big knot in the end, pass it under the clothing
and make it enter the head at the very back of the
Stringing a marionette options
neck (and hiding the knot). Let it come out at the
pin at top centre. Adjust to final length later by
making a big knot or a loop. An optional bead
can be attached at the end to make it easier to
pick up and hold.
Two head strings give more control of the head
and prevent it accidentally turning. Place two
pins one each side of the head to mark a position
halfway from front to back and about a quarter of
the way down from top of head to neck. Thread a
long needle, no knot, no need to cut it off, make
the needle enter the head at one pin and exit at
the other; pull the thread through until the exit
thread is probably too long (e.g., 20"/50cm). Cut
off the second thread to the same length. Tie a
knot in each thread really close to the head so the
thread cannot slide through. Temporarily tie the
two ends together.
If the length of all strings is adjustable, then
they can be altered to suit the heights of different
stages and puppeteers and to avoid tiredness. For
childrens use during free play, two strings are
convenient; with the strings making one big loop
the puppets are easily handled and easily hung up
on a hook when not in use.
Three strings mean the puppet can nod and
bow. Add a third string to the above by threading
a needle with a long thread, pass it under the
clothes, enter the back partway down then
carefully exit through the clothing at a point
higher up in the middle of the back, just below
(say, "/2cm or less) the back of the neck.
Hand strings
Thread a needle with a
really long thread (e.g., 60"/
150cm), pass it under the
clothing, enter at one wrist
and exit from the top of the
hand, now enter the top of
the other hand and exit from
that wrist inside the clothing,
remove the needle and make
a big knot at that end of
the thread. Now adjust the
length of the thread between
104

the hands; if the marionette is hung by the head
strings from a hook, then the hand string passed
over the same hook should be long enough to at
least allow the arms to flop down at their sides.
If in doubt start with the hand string possibly
too long, experiment making movements and
gestures (with a friend or a mirror), then shorten
if necessary. Too short a string would mean the
puppeteers hand will be too close to the puppet
and thereby within the watchers gaze. A position
in which both the puppeteers forearms are more
or less horizontal is comfortable and looks right.
Hair and hats
Wool roving/tops is ideal for hair, it gives a
less fixed image than a proper hairdo (this latter
would probably be more suitable for a folk tale
than a fairy tale) and can be pinned, adjusted and
sewn into position with a few stitches in a short
time. A marionette princess345 was given pink
105
Appendix
hair, pink head and pink clothes, her two side
braids/plaits were wound round and round to
cover her ears in a traditional German hair style;
she looked fine there are no rules on this (see
photo on page 106).
A hat/bonnet/headscarf, very simply made,
can be sewn into position with tiny, unseen
stitches and then wool yarn/roving/tops pinned
close to the hat and sewn with tiny stitches.
Legs and feet
(probably of the same colour) are a possibility,
if not a royal character, but they are not at all
necessary.
Sleeves
Take a rectangular piece of silk (e.g., 16"/40cm
x 3" (8cm), fold in half twice (inside out) stitch
a little from each
Cut a small cross at neck
end towards centre
(turn inside out
again). Fold in
half and cut a very
small cross in the fold on the side away from
stitches. Insert the body into the hole. Stitch it a
little at front and back, both at neck and waist, to
hold it neatly in place. Either gather up the sleeve
opening at the wrist when you attach the hands or
close opening kimono-style.
Appendix

Length of dress
To correct length
and cut main dress
level (if not circular
originally), hang up
puppet with arms
outstretched and
horizontal, place pins
at equal distance
from neck, cut, no
need to hem.

Mix and match?

Generally a puppet show needs a single
puppet type and unified costumes of the
characters. Elementals are different beings so may
be different and less distinct. For example, for
Grimms Rumpelstiltskin, human characters
were tabletop-type puppets made with cotton
while Rumpelstiltskin was simply made with red
wool roving/tops. For Grimms The Elves and
the Shoemaker, all were tabletop-type, but the
two elves were pink/peach silk marionettes. Very
active, they were small and thin with legs and
arms; it was surprising and funny to see them King
suddenly appear, for the first time, on the roof
of the shoemakers hut and slide down to the
ground.

Decoration and detail

For The Princess in the Flaming Castle the
king (see right) was given a crown easily made
from gold cardboard with a jewel/coloured tin
foil stuck in the centre. A small green jewel was
stuck onto a heart-shaped piece of gold cardboard.
Gold-coloured paper looking like lace was stuck
around the edge and hung round the kings
neck from a narrow strap 9" long (22cm) of gold
cardboard.
jewel placed here
The princess hair was braided and wound in
a spiral over her ears. A tiara was stitched on, then
a white chiffon train was attached only at the back
of the head (so it hid the back of the tiara).

106

Baby boy
Made from a
rectangle of
yellow silk with
yellow face, hands
each a knot small
cap of yellow hair,
laid on wool in small,
oval basket 2" high.
A baby easily made from wool
Take a narrow piece of pink wool roving/
tops or card wool batting. Tie it in a knot in the
middle; this becomes the head (e.g., 2cm diam),
arrange the face and tie lightly at neck. For the
arms take a narrower length of the same wool, tie
it in a knot in two places; these are hands (e.g.,
about 6cm apart); wind a very narrow, twisted
piece of wool round the wrists. Insert one hand
Appendix
and arm below the neck between the two longer
pieces of wool which are then turned in and
under so their hidden ends are higher than the
waist, and the baby ends as if with a bulbous pink
skirt. Lastly, a very narrow piece of wool roving
(e.g., pale yellow) is wound once round the neck,
crosses over the chest to waist level, round the
back and round the waist once or twice, allowing
the ends to attach to this belt by simple pressure
or by tucking in. Place baby on undyed wool
roving directly on the stage or in a tiny basket or
cradle.
To make animal and bird puppets
Knitted
Simple knitted squares can be made into a
variety of animals. Cast on 20 stitches and knit
20 rows with a plain stitch, cast off. Make a small,
firm ball with wool roving. Make the head by
putting the ball under the knitted square midway
between two sides and nearer one end than the
other; tie a length of yarn around to make the
neck and tie tightly. Next thread a needle with
yarn and, beginning at a corner at the head end,
sew two sides together for a short distance to
make a front leg. Repeat for the other front leg
so that the two legs meet in the middle. Do the
same for the back legs which usually need to be
longer. There should be some distance between
the front pair and back pair and that will become
the underbelly. Next stuff with wool roving, first
the legs and then the body, then sew the abdomen
closed. Lastly add features that distinguish the
type of animal. For example, a rabbit would need
long ears (e.g. crocheted or felt) and a tail (insert a
crochet hook and pull out a very little of the white
stuffing). A cat could be given crocheted ears,
some whiskers (perhaps sewn) and a long tail.
107
Appendix

Wire-and-wool animals Most animals

Here are some suggestions for the sacred/magical bull in The Princess
in the Flaming Castle:
(A) Firstly one had best go and study a live bull for an hour.
Contemplating the animal brings home the archetypal qualities and
an insight into his fundamental nature. One notices his characteristic BULL
pose and how his form differs from the more commonly seen cow: The
proportions of head, neck, shoulders and chest are greater, the outline
of head, neck and back is different the top of the shoulders is so much
higher than the hind quarters which are almost spindly. If a live animal is If head is to move,
inaccessible, then pictures can be studied showing it in various positions, make a joint
and a photo nearby when constructing is a help. Imbibing the archetype
enables the creation of an animal clearly showing bull-ness whilst lacking
detail.
Make the frame by taking a long piece of wire (e.g., at least 50"/125cm),
and for the head bend it into two ovals/somewhat flattened circles; separate
them a little so that they are further apart at one end so that the crown
of the head will be wider than the muzzle. Continue bending the wire so it
forms the neck and backbone, then bend it back so the backbone is double.
At the shoulders twist the wire round the backbone, down one leg and
double it back, round the back, down the other leg and back, twist round
the backbone to fix the shoulders, then along to the hips, down one leg
and back, round the backbone, down the other leg and back and finish by
winding around the backbone. The legs should look too long at this stage
because wool forming the belly and chest will make the legs become much
shorter.
Next, to pad it out use many very thin, long pieces of wool roving; this
enables you to be more exact and to easily correct what does not seem right.
Begin padding at
the head by winding
roving around the head, probably twice, then the
neck then make a lemniscate around the shoulders.
For a moveable, jointed neck, wrap the head and
neck with wool, enclosing a wool-wrapped weight
in the head, and then cover with stretch gauze. The
horns of wire can be attached now or later. Lastly
they are wrapped with a little pale yellow wool.
(Wire for the golden horns of the goat in The
Hungry Cat was firmly fixed to the frame in the
beginning because they would receive rough use;
then at the end they were wrapped with gold wool.)
Front legs are wrapped with wool beginning tightly
at the hoof for a narrow leg, then winding round
the shoulders and chest, the back legs similarly,
then around the hips. Next to make the belly deep

108

enough, a roll of wool is made and placed below
the backbone, then held in place by wool wrapped
around both. Lastly, if the neck is jointed, the
head and neck are now covered with a piece of
silk.
Otherwise a single piece of pale brown silk
is put over the back and head, pinned under
the belly, smoothed around the head and excess
silk folded away behind the head in the groove
between the cheeks. It is stitched into shape and
in place there and at the ear position. The four
corners of the silk can each cover a hoof and leg
and be held in place with stitches.
Alternatively each leg can be covered with
a separate rectangle of silk. Tail (a single thick
To make a dragon
Take a very long piece of stretch gauze (e.g., 2"/5cm wide, i.e., 4"/10cm around) and insert five
sausage shapes each made of rolled up wool and including a stone/weight (wrapped in wool). Close and
Dragon
109
Appendix
thread), ears (optional) and a golden star on the
forehead are sewn on and the horns fixed/sewn.
For the optional eyes, each a single stitch, the
thread can pass through the head to the other eye
and then be pulled tight and knotted out of sight.
Strings need to be extra long to allow space for
the boy, also a marionette, to ride on it.
Or (B) more simply, the wire frame can be
made without legs. Instead legs are made of
silk (with possibly a very little wool inside and
optional wool-wrapped weight). A knot made
in the silk at the end forms the hoof, and an
optional second knot higher up can form the
knee/stifle joint (allowed if the silk is really long
in the beginning). Otherwise, as above.
sew at the mouth end, tie to separate the segments.
OR First make a wire frame with five pieces loosely
and flexibly joined, add wool with stone/weight,
then insert into gauze and continue as above.
A very little wool in the other end of the
gauze makes the tail, then close and sew. A single
piece of (green?) silk fabric is put over and pinned
under the belly. For each ear gather a circle (e.g.,
2"/10cm diam) of silk to make a bulge, fix it with
a few stitches. Make two smaller bulges for the
nostrils. Something like a ruff around the neck
is optional, it can be made with a fold in the silk.
The four corners of the fabric are each knotted to
make a foot. Knobs are made along the centre back
from neck to the segment of the back legs, each
is a twist of the silk, then sewn. The tail simply
narrows to a point. Close the fabric by sewing
along the length of the abdomen. Insert strings
(at least 20/50cm long) in abdomen to exit from
centre back and tie to sticks or dowel.
Appendix

Whale
for How Glooskap Found the Summer
A simple wire frame is made to keep the flukes apart
from above
and covered first with wool. Then a light/medium blue
silk is placed over the top and sewn under the belly and
posterior edges of the flukes. An optional white silk
gauze can then be added placed over the top and sewn
likewise, then a seam stitched to suggest a mouth.
Strings at least 20"/50cm long to a single stick mean
a puppeteer can manage the whale with one hand and
make it dive and rise and with the other hand hold a
marionette, Glooskap, so he appears to ride on it.

Whale

Bird
For How Glooskap Found the Summer, the loon can be
made with first a simple wire frame, and wool wrapped around
head and neck. A roll of wool (which encloses a wool-wrapped
weight) is placed to form the body, then wool wrapped around to
hold that roll in place.
A teal blue silk covers the top
of the body up to the neck and is
from above
sewn underneath. A second silk
covers the head and neck and then
forms the wings (it is sewn under
the head and neck and has a single
stitch near the tail). An optional
narrow piece of white silk to make
a collar around the neck makes it
look more like a loon. A very long
string connects the wingtips to a
long stick so that the wings can be
made to flap as it flies.

Loon

110

(11) Tips for Performing
Puppeteers can easily become over-sensitive,
uptight and nervous when involved with
marionettes. Time above all is called for, ample
time for experimentation and adjustment for
choosing and studying the tale/story, marionette-
making, stage construction, music, songs and
rehearsing. This may mean an annual effort for
a group using marionettes, with shows for the
rest of the year by a single puppeteer (who may
also narrate) using tabletop puppets (the same
set of puppets can be used for several different
stories). While rehearsing, have someone sit in
the position of the audience to comment, make
suggestions and show appreciation.
The spiritual quality of the performance
is reflected to the extent to which each person
has taken it to heart. There needs to be study
and reflection alone, getting the story under
ones skin so to speak, practising alone with a
mirror, mulling over it in bed, and an emotional
involvement and commitment. The characters
people and animals come alive for you. How
someone picks up your marionette matters (not
by the head!). It is all about caring, and for every
detail that makes the difference.
Music is played at the beginning and end. It
can support a character making a long journey.
It can reinforce a salutary moment such as when
the cow in Akimba drops a gold coin from her
mouth. It can be played when there is a pause in
the action or for a time interval and may precede
the words, Many years later, .
Songs are important and absolutely necessary;
they can intersperse the story and be as short
as one line. Puppeteers and narrator can sing
together. The standard of singing is less important
than that they care enough to make the effort and
try. Often the children leave afterwards singing
one of the songs.
The narrator sits to the side at right angles to
the audience. Her chair may be a nice, wooden
chair or perhaps a chair draped with a cloth. Her
table for instrument(s) and a candle is draped
with a cloth or piece of silk. (S)he has committed
the tale to heart but appears to read the text from
Appendix
a beautiful book which could be a simple folder
covered in a beautiful paper appropriate to the
story or a beautiful book with a ribbon bookmark
at the pages where the text has been inserted.
(S)he catches the eye of each puppeteer to make
sure each is ready before beginning by lighting a
beeswax candle.
Movement of the marionettes
It is helpful if puppeteers each take their
marionette(s) home and practise gestures and
movements in front of a mirror and/or audience.
Watch its height above the stage so it neither
flies nor drags. Movement should be smooth not
jumpy. When making an entrance, a character
should appear at the same height as the stage, if
possible, and not jump up onto it (unless it is an
elemental). If more entrances/exits are required
than at the ends of the stage, then the background
can be cut with a curved dip or an overlapping
break in it. For a long journey, or even all journeys
on a small stage, make an S-shaped path or even
a lemniscate to make for longer travel. A puppet
(almost) never turns his back on the audience;
(s)he is allowed to turn away from fully facing
the audience by up to 45 degrees only. Some
slight movement at least is needed at all times on
stage. A marionette not being handled should
either leave the stage or be hidden behind a prop,
such as a tree or hut, or simply hung against the
backcloth and a silk draped over it.
A basic stage construction, such as some
chairs and a plank of wood across them or two or
three playstands, can be carried easily in a car and
enables rehearsing in a different place than the
performance. For a longer stage, try two folding/
trestle tables, apart, joined by something stiff
and strong across the gap (e.g., a suitcase divider).
Cardboard is added, fixed with masking tape, cut
to give curves and interest to the background,
to ease entrances and exits and to round off the
corners of the stage. A light-coloured sheet put
flat against the background and stage means the
cardboard will not show through the silk; next it
is covered/draped with silks, freshly ironed before
the final performance(s)) to create the etheric
111
Appendix
world of the fairy tale. Edges and selvages of silks
on stage are turned under; a straight line where
there is a change of colour is avoided; curves and
ripples are made, yet the surface of the stage must
be sufficiently flat to allow smooth travel of the
marionettes. Next, props are placed, for example
a blue silk for a pond/lake/well, three green silk-
covered cones create a wood/forest and a warm
pink-fuschia-mauve silk draped to cover some of
the backcloth and some of the stage makes a good,
warm home.
The end of the performance
Whatever sequence of actions began the
performance are now repeated in reverse. Thus
at the end, for example, the narrator may close
her book, then the puppeteers lift the long veil
and cover the scene from sight while singing the
song they began the show with (e.g., Mother of
the Fairy Tale), then the kinderharp repeats the
tune (rather than both instrument and voices at
the same time). Then the narrator puts out the
candle with a snuffer or perhaps a shell (blowing
out a candle is not a good example for imitation
and children tend to blow out a candle from
above the direction most dangerous), while the
puppeteers (probably for the first time since the
performance began) make full and prolonged eye
contact with the audience whilst giving them a
big smile and looking happy and relaxed. Now
everyone realises it is all over.
Hooks
on which to hang marionettes
when off stage are useful.
They can be made with wire
and fixed handily behind the
background or better still
behind the puppeteers, out of
Wire hook: the way. Usually a puppeteer
Felt covers most of it. can handle at most two
marionettes at the same time.
A group of marionettes can be moved by
one person if they are tied to an open oval made
with very stiff wire (it can be covered with wool or
felt) or a wooden circle (e.g., from an embroidery
112
frame). Examples are
the seven brothers
in the Grimms
tale, The Seven
Ravens and the
flower fairies, the
entourage of the
Queen of Summer
in the American
Indian tale, How Glooskap Found the Summer.
From a small branch of a tree or bush can
be hung birds or insects. Every puppet show
needs an element of surprise. This example shows
the flock of swan-geese (each made from a pipe
cleaner and white wool roving), just three in
total, made for
the tale, The
Swan-Geese.346
The children
were certainly
surprised when
they suddenly
flew up over the
background and
into the scene.
Puppeteers will dress in a single, quiet,
uniform colour and not wear watches or jewellery
for the performance. String length is best so
hands do not obstruct background (but be
comfortable). One puppeteer can operate at most
two marionettes at the same time unless they are
joined together.
Ideas for puppet shows for
3- to 4-year-olds
A show of 510 minutes is plenty long
enough. See pages 6466 for ideas about the
music. Create a scene from nature or use the
nature table already there. Anyone can speak
the sun, clouds, animals, plants, a rock or crystal,
elemental beings and human puppets. If you can
spend a half-hour alone in nature, ideas will come.
Perhaps you watch a group of ants each carrying
a grain bigger than itself to their hole, then
disappearing down in to their home from that
you can make a story. Or in springtime, flower
 Appendix

children/fairies could each hold a flower, then a

young child puppet goes out, collects the flowers
(perhaps asking permission of each one first and
then thanking each), brings them home, gives
them to someone who helps put them in water.
(Flowers can be made of felt with a green wire and
felt stem).
A lamb feeling hot in his long woolly coat
could be shorn for the first time on his first
birthday, then frisk about feeling cooler and ready
for summer. In winter a two-tiered stage/nature
table could show the gnomes on the lower floor at
work finding crystals/beautiful stones and taking
such minerals to the plant roots getting ready for
spring. A dead but intact rose bush can be ideal to
show both above and below ground. The gnomes
in the picture on the right are easy and quick to
make (6-year-olds could make them). The ground A winter nature table
above can be covered with a white felt/silk. Add
some small, coloured polished stones and/or Mother Earth could search and find them and
crystals below. In early spring the gnomes could wake them up one by one, perhaps with a little
be removed and root babies tucked in places, song.

After rehearsal of The Queen Bee

Notes tree (dead branch with felt leaves, some would say too realistic but lets not be
dogmatic), three ducks on lake (simple shape, no wings), cardboard castle to be covered
with grey silk, swarm of bees (strings not long enough?)

113
Appendix
(12) Some scientific information
Full-spectrum, flicker-free, fluorescent lights347
This type of daylight simulation lightbulb
produces a light which is full-spectrum,
fluorescent and very important free of flicker.
Canadian research with handicapped children
showed that this light compared with ordinary
fluorescent light caused highly significant results
that affected blind children as
much as the sighted.
Blood pressure was lowered
and it particularly improved
behaviour; among other things
it reduced aggression. The
same research team worked in
mainstream schools for over
a year, and they found that
children under full-spectrum
lighting were quieter, less
moody, less stressed, showed
the greatest improvement in academic and IQ test
scores and were absent due to illness only one
third as often.
Another study by dentists found children had
67% fewer cavities with full-spectrum lighting.
Animal studies have been equally dramatic, for
example egg-laying was prolonged by at least three
times. Elderly men in Boston given this lighting
for eight hours a day for four weeks absorbed 15%
more calcium. It is recommended for Seasonal
Affective Disorder (winter depression).
This kind of light is more gentle for the
eyes, and it reflects colours accurately and with
high contrast so visibility is improved. Artists
and craftspeople find colours and designs much
clearer and their creativity is increased. It gives
a cold, white light though. Clearly this kind of
lightbulb (made in Germany but also available in
the UK in 2000) is recommended for Waldorf
schools and kindergartens (and for puppet shows)
if natural lighting is insufficient.
Light energy in the body, further data348
The International Institute of Biophysics is
composed of fifteen groups of scientists from
international centres around the world. Fritz-
Albert Popp was the first to carry out a great deal
of research on the effect of light on biological
systems. He found that all living things emit light
(termed photons), even seedlings grown in the
dark, and that this light is very coherent. The
higher the organism on the evolutionary scale,
the fewer the photons emitted. Photon emissions
from free-range hens eggs were far more coherent
than those from battery hens eggs. Photon
emissions from food showed the healthiest
food had the lowest and most coherent light
intensity. Photon emissions in the body provide
an ideal communication system for the transfer
of information to the many cells across the
organism. Photon emissions offer an explanation
of how cell coordination and communication
work and even of how a single cell can grow into
a fully developed adult. Popp found that living
things take in light emissions from one another,
so wave resonance may be used to communicate
not only inside the body but between living things
as well.
Popp studied one persons photon emissions
daily for nine months and found the body has
biological rhythms at 7, 14, 32, 80 and 270 days
as well as following the worlds biorhythms. The
emissions of a healthy person are exceedingly
coherent, but cancer patients have lost that
coherence and those natural periodic rhythms.
Popp wondered if plant extracts could change
the character of photon emissions from cancer
cells (i.e., make them lower and more coherent)
so they could communicate again with the rest
of the body. Of all plant extracts supposed to
help cancer, all but one actually increased photon
emissions. Only mistletoe appeared to help the
body re-socialise the photon emissions of the
cancer cells, and Popp was able to use mistletoe
successfully to cure a terminally-ill cancer patient.
Mistletoe is the plant Steiner said corresponds
to cancer in humans and should be used for its
treatment. A potentised mistletoe extract (Iscador)
may be prescribed by anthroposophical doctors,
and in Germany and Switzerland (in 2012) half
of cancer patients received mistletoe alongside
conventional treatment.
114
 Appendix

Light in the body causes photo-repair (healing

by light). Popp found that photo-repair works most
efficiently at the UV frequency of 380nm. When
light of this frequency is shone on an everyday
substance, the light passes through unchanged.
However, when that light is shone on a cancer-
causing substance, it absorbs the light, changes
the frequency and emits it at a new frequency.
In other words, a carcinogen scrambles light in
the body. Thus it seems that a compound causes
cancer by permanently blocking this light and
scrambling it so that photo-repair can no longer
occur.
According to the discoveries of Popp and
others, we are each an energetic charge. Human
beings and all living things are a coalescence of
energy in a field of energy connected to every
other thing in the world. This pulsating energy
field is the central engine of our being and our
consciousness. There is no me and not-me
duality to our bodies in relation to the universe,
but rather one underlying energy field. This field
is the force which finally determines whether we Illustration 10.
are healthy or ill, the force which must be tapped The zones of disturbance around a television set
in order to heal. (cathode ray type) generated by degenerate, anti-
clockwise vortices. These zones are additional to the
electric, magnetic and electromagnetic fields created.
Radiations from television (written in 2000)
There are electric, magnetic and
electromagnetic fields and other vibrational
white computer screen, it extends 2 metres, so all
disturbances generated by the television and
viewers and users are affected.349 The strongest
the computer that affect the users health. The
effect is caused by a vertical column of degenerate,
electric field spreads out to the front and side
anti-clockwise vortices that appear to be an
of the screen, reducing rapidly in intensity and
important component of electromagnetic stress.350
can be easily eliminated using an add-on screen
The column extends for several storeys above
and glare protector. The magnetic fields are
and below the television set, penetrating floors
not strong. They spread out asymmetrically,
and ceilings. Thus in office buildings or blocks of
decreasing rapidly in intensity. Both the computer
apartments, someone may sit or sleep within the
and the television transmit quite high frequency
core of the field, so vibrations will be transferred
radio waves that are electromagnetic, travelling a
to his body tissues (mainly through the movement
long way in all directions. Additionally both the
of the blood, which spirals clockwise through the
television and the computer VDU have coils of
blood vessels).351
wire used to create electromagnets that generate
zones of disturbance (as shown in Illustration 7).
Water vibrations are disturbed in these zones.
The balloon-shaped field in front of a colour
television extends for 8 metres; from a black and

115
Appendix
Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder
(ADHD)
Children who are potentially learning-disabled
can be helped by exposure to good language (both
at home and in school), a positively structured
environment and methods of instruction
appropriate to his/her style of learning so that
learning problems may never materialise.352
Other factors besides television that
cause ADHD include the mothers taking
drugs or medication before conception or
during pregnancy, the fathers doing so before
conception, toxins from seminal fluid during
pregnancy, maternal stress in pregnancy, the
mothers taking medication in childbirth, passive
smoking, diet, pinworm (threadworm) parasites,353
lifestyle pace and pollution of food, water and air.
One study found that boys with ADHD had
significantly low levels of omega-3 and omega-6
fatty acids in the blood as well as characteristic
symptoms of fatty acid deficiency (thirst, frequent
urination, dry hair and skin).354
If a mother takes alcohol or nicotine (by
smoking) or benzodiazepine tranquillisers or
other psychotropic drugs in pregnancy, her baby is
116
likely to be an addict for life. In the UK a possible
total of two million children born since 1960 are
brain-damaged by benzodiazepine tranquillisers
taken by their mothers in pregnancy; they are
born addicted and their state may be irreversible.
Research shows over 90% of such children suffer
ADHD in school and 70% become dependent
on alcohol or drugs.355 In the US in 1990 it was
estimated that at least one baby in nine was
affected by drugs taken during pregnancy.356 Yet
today in the US, psychoactive drugs including
tranquillisers are given to more than a third of all
pregnant women!357
A Swedish study looked at the effects of drugs
for pain in childbirth; giving mothers opiates (e.g.,
morphine or pethidine) or barbiturates within
ten hours of delivery meant if the baby once
grown up chose to take drugs, (s)he would choose
from the opiate family, whereas giving a mother
nitrous oxide gas at that time indicated the baby
once grown, if choosing to take drugs, would
choose among amphetamines.358 Thus from the
family of drugs given for pain in childbirth can be
predicted the family of drugs which will be chosen
if the baby ever becomes a drug user.
 Endnotes

ENDNOTES 38. Ibid., p.112.

39. Rudolf Steiner, The Inner Nature of Music and the
Experience of Tone, pp.32, 35.
1. Body of life forces, termed by neurologists the
40. Nancy Foster quoting Helmut Moog, The
phantom body
musical experience of the pre-school child
2. Your Self-Confident Baby by Magda Gerber
translated into English, 1972.
3. Ibid., p.166.
41. Op. cit., Steiner, p.67.
4. Willi Aeppli, The Care and Development of the
42. Julius Knierim, Quintenlieder, p.2.
Senses, p.37.
43. Op. cit., Steiner, p.69.
5. Waldorf Schools: Vol.1 Kindergarten and Early Grades,
44. Norbert Visser, Appendix, Live Music and Recorded
p.180.
Sound.
6. Op. cit., Aeppli, p.42.
45. Op. cit., Soesman, p.121.
7. Albert Soesman, The Twelve Senses, p.29.
46. Martin Large, Whos Bringing Them Up?, p.39.
8. Ibid., p.18.
47. Op. cit., Healy, p.185.
9. Op. cit., Gerber, p.145.
48. Levy quoted in J. Healy, ibid., p.214.
10. Op. cit., Soesman, p.134.
49. Op. cit., Healy, p.225.
11. Prof. Matti Bergstrom, p.9.
50. Ibid., p.224.
12. Jack Temple, oral communication.
51. Ibid., p.102.
13. Op. cit., Soesman, p.25.
52. Vail quoted by Healy, J., ibid., p.102.
14. Ibid., p.31.
53. B. Brazelton quoted by Healy, J., ibid., p.43.
15. Ibid., p.25.
54. Op. cit., Soesman, p.127.
16. Ibid., p.28.
55. Ibid.
17. Ibid., p.27.
56. Ibid., p.128.
18. Ibid., p.23.
57. Ibid., p.133.
19. Ibid., p.28.
58. Ibid., p.137.
20. Sara Smilansky, Childrens Play and Learning, p.19.
59. Ibid., p.136.
21. Ibid.
60. John Davy, Appendix to The Twelve Senses, p.159.
22. Jaffke, F., Significance of Imitation and Example for
61. Op. cit., Bittleston, p.49.
Development of the Will, p.4.
62. Steiner, R., quoted by Aeppli, W., ibid., p.40.
23. Op. cit., Soesman, p.123.
63. Op. cit., Aeppli, p.40.
24. Carla Hannaford quoted by Ingun Schneider,
64. Op. cit., Large, p.46.
Gateways (Waldorf KG Association) 41, p.8.
65. Op. cit., Healy, p.42.
25. Ingun Schneider, Gateways (Waldorf Early
66. Friedrich Benesch, Easter, p.18.
Childhood Association) 41, p.9.
67. Dr. John Ott, Health and Light.
26. Molly von Heider, Looking Forward, p.2.
68. Dr. Richard Hobday, The Healing Sun quoted
27. Meyercourt, M & R. Lissau, The Challenge of the
in What Doctors Dont Tell You, 12, no.4, p.3.
Will, p.19.
69. Dr. Zane Kline, Sunbathing could save your life,
28. Audrey McAllen, Sleep, p.55.
in What Doctors Dont Tell You, p.12.
29. Op. cit., Gerber, p.14.
70. What Doctors Dont Tell You, p.2.
30. Adam Bittleston, Loneliness, p.15.
71. Mander, J., Four Arguments for the Elimination of
31. Op. cit., Soesman, p.63.
Television, p.174
32. Phillip Day, Health Wars, pp.115-117.
72. Ott quoted by Mander, ibid., p.177.
33. Op. cit., Soesman, p.76
73. Wurtman quoted by Mander, ibid., p.187.
34. Ibid., p.83.
74. Feingold quoted by Mander ibid., p.180.
35. Ibid., p.89.
75. Op. cit., Mander, p.186.
36. Ibid., p.98.
76. Ibid., p.180.
37. Ibid., p.97.

117
Endnotes

77. Op. cit., What Doctors Dont Tell You, 12, no.4, p.3. 117. Ibid.
78. Ott, John, What Doctors Dont Tell You, ibid., p.4. 118. Suinn quoted in Mander, J., ibid., p.228.
79. Op. cit., Mander, p.171. 119. Op. cit., Mander, p.229.
80. Yeager quoted by Mander, J., ibid, p.194. 120. Ibid., p.259.
81. Op. cit., Mander, p.201. 121. Ibid., p.235.
82. Rainer Patzlaff, manuscript translation, p.3. 122. Ibid., p.269.
83. Op. cit., Mander, p.204. 123. Ibid., p.268.
84. Stern quoted by Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves 124. Ibid., p.269.
to Death, p.152. 125. Ibid., p.319.
85. The Emerys quoted by Mander, J., ibid., p.206. 126. Ibid., p.296.
86. Ibid., p.207. 127. Birt quoted by Mander, J., ibid., p.321.
87. Peper quoted in Mander, J., ibid. p.209. 128. Op. cit., Postman, pp.147-148.
88. Emerys quoted by Rainer Patzlaff, Manuscript 129. Yeager, J., More Lifeways, p.187.
translation, p.2. 130. Op. cit., Postman, p.141.
89. Op. cit., Patzlaff, p.3. 131. Ibid.
90. Ibid., p.4. 132. Op. cit., Mander, p.270.
91. Op. cit., Mander, p.213. 133. Ibid., p.45.
92. Ibid., p.168. 134. Ibid., p.34.
93. Hilgard quoted by Mander, ibid., p.196. 135. Op. cit., Postman, p.108.
94. Tart quoted by Mander, J., ibid,. p.196. 136. Ibid., p.135.
95. Op. cit., Mander, p.249. 137. Ibid.
96. Ibid., p.253. 138. Joan Almon, Violence and the Media, p.7.
97. Ibid., p.255. 139. Hickman, R., More Lifeways, p.196.
98. More Lifeways, p.84. 140. Eugene Schwartz, public lecture.
99. Op. cit., Mander, p.254. 141. Op. cit., Healy, p.65.
100. Gerbner and Gross, quoted by Mander, J., ibid., 142. Ibid., p.51.
p.255. 143. Klivington quoted by Healy, J., ibid., p.51.
101. Felix Schultz, The Computer Network and the 144. Sir David Winkley, Grey Matters Current
Future of Humanity, in Three Lectures, p.21. Neurological Research and Its Implications for
102. Ibid. Educators, p.3.
103. Op. cit., Postman, Foreword. 145. Op. cit., Healy, p.69.
104. Heinrich quoted by Buhler, W., ibid., p.8. 146. Ibid., p.68.
105. Op. cit., Mander, p.219. 147. Op. cit., Large, p.36.
106. Ibid., p.220. 148. Ibid., p.37.
107. Ibid. 149. Eva Frommer quoted by Large, M., ibid., p.37.
108. Ibid., p.221. 150. What Doctors Dont Tell You magazine, 11, 7, p.12.
109. Ibid., p.222. 151. Kline, Waldorf Kindergarten Newsletter, Autumn
110. Ibid., p.223. 1997, p.12.
111. Ibid., p.222. 152. Ibid., p.14.
112. Ibid. 153. Op. cit., Healy, p.225.
113. Rudolf Steiner, GA290, quoted by Martin 154. Ibid., p.228.
Riedel, Some notes on the effects of 155. Segalowitz quoted by Healy, J., ibid., p.215.
architectural pforms, p.3. 156. Op. cit., Healy, p.199.
114. Op. cit., Mander, p.225. 157. Op. cit., Winkley, p.8.
115. Ibid., p.226. 158. Op. cit., Healy, p.189.
116. Ibid., p.167. 159. Luddington-Hoe quoted by Healy, J., ibid., p.174.

118
 Endnotes

160. Healy, J., ibid., p.173. 200. Op. cit., Postman, p.122.
161. J. Mills quoted by Healy, J., ibid., p.173. 201. Op. cit., Steiner, p.99.
162. Healy, J., ibid. p.174. 202. Pyzer, Deirdre, UK Kindergarten Newsletter, no.37,
163. Ibid., p.176. p.18.
164. Ibid., p.174. 203. Op. cit., Weil, p.58.
165. Weikart quoted by Healy, J., ibid., p.172. 204. Op. cit., Schwartz, p.15.
166. Ibid. 205. Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment, p.12.
167. Op. cit., Buhler, p.9. 206. Ibid., p.8.
168. Gerhartz-Frank quoted in Buhler, W., ibid., p.9. 207. Ibid., p.6.
169. Op. cit., Buhler, p.6. 208. Ibid., p.19.
170. Wilmar quoted in Buhler, (translation) Sozial 209. Roy Wilkinson, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales,
Hygiene Merkblatter zur Gesundheitspflege im p.12.
personlichen und sozialen Leben, Nr.27, p.10. 210. Op. cit., Bettelheim, p.3.
171. Op. cit., Buhler, p.10. 211. Joseph Campbell, postscript to The Complete
172. Friedrich Froebel quoted Gateways, 41, p.29. Grimms Fairy Tales, p.864.
173. Op. cit., Jaffke, p.3. 212. Op. cit., Bettelheim, p.9.
174. Op. cit., Winkley, p.6. 213. Eisenstaedt, Life Magazine, 1963.
175. Op. cit., von Heider, p.2. 214. Op. cit., Aeppli, p.45.
176. Mary Jo Oresti, Zoo exercises, oral 215. Audrey McAllen, Sleep, p.12.
communication. 216. Op. cit., Postman, p.122.
177. Op. cit., Buhler, p.2. 217. Op. cit., Winkley, p.5.
178. Andrew Weil, M.D., Spontaneous Healing, p.35. 218. Klivington quoted in J. Healy, op. cit., p.51.
179. Weikhart quoted by Healy, J., ibid. p.171. 219. Helmut Von Kugelgen, article Marionette
180. Ibid. Theater: Posing a Task for Socially Oriented
181. Ibid., Healy, J. Education, p.1.
182. Op. cit., D. Winkley, p.6. 220. Rudolf Steiner, The Poetry and Meaning of Fairy
183. Op. cit., Healy, p.201. Tales, p.48.
184. BBC World Service radio, Autumn, 1999. 221. Op. cit., Von Kugelgen, p.1.
185. Op. cit., Hickman, p.195. 222. Op. cit., Steiner, p.49.
186. Rosamund, Waldorf Kindergarten Newsletter 223. Op. cit., Von Kugelgen, p.1.
(USA), Autumn 1997. 224. Op. cit., Bettelheim, p.179.
187. Op. cit., Almon, p.10. 225. Op. cit., Joseph Campbell, p.835.
188. Op. cit., Hickman, p.196. 226. Op. cit., Steiner, p.22.
189. Ibid.. 227. Ursula Grahl, The Wisdom in Fairy Tales, p.130.
190. John Davy, Appendix to The Twelve Senses, p.151 228. Op. cit., Steiner, p.22.
191. John F. Gardner, in Waldorf Schools: Kindergartens 229. Ibid., p.2.
and Early Grades, p.51. 230. Ibid., p.3.
192. Op. cit., Davy, p.152. 231. Carl Jung quoted by Ruth Putsch in article
193. Op. cit., Aeppli, p.144. What to Do about Witches in An Overview of
194. Steiner, R., Man as a Being of Sense and Perception, the Waldorf Kindergarten, 1, p.52.
quoted by W. Aeppli, op. cit., p.34. 232. Op. cit., Steiner, p.18.
195. Ibid. 233. Ibid., p.33.
196. Ibid. 234. Op. cit., Wilkinson, p.9.
197. Op. cit., Davy, p.158. 235. Ibid.
198. Ibid., p.148. 236. Ibid.
199. Steiner, R., Understanding Young Children, p.36. 237. Op. cit., Steiner, p.37.

119
Endnotes

238. Ibid., p.39. 275. Shingebiss from Waldorf Kindergarten Newsletter,

239. Op. cit., Wilkinson, p.31.
240. Ibid., p.28.
241. Ibid., p.43.
242. Op. cit., Steiner, p.39.
243. Op. cit., Wilkinson, p.24.
244. Ibid., pp.34, 35.
245. Op. cit., Steiner, p.35.
246. Op. cit., Wilkinson, p.55.
247. Ibid.
248. Ibid., p.58.
249. Ibid., p.10.
250. Ibid., p.36.
251. Ibid., p.64.
252. M. Burton, New View magazine, 1999, 2, p.37.
253. Rudolf Meyer, The Wisdom of Fairy Tales, pp.143-
144.
254. Op. cit., Wilkinson, p.25
255. Ibid., p.62.
256. Ruth Pusch, About the Sea-Hare.
257. Beckh quoted by Ruth Pusch, What to
Do about Witches, Overview of the Waldorf
Kindergarten, p.52.
258. Op. cit., Pusch, p.3.
259. Op. cit., Wilkinson, p.26.
260. Op. cit., Steiner, p.15.
261. Ibid., p.23.
262. J. Campbell quoted New View magazine, 1999, 1,
p.7.
263. C. Vogler, The Writers Journey quoted in New
View magazine, 1999, 1, p.7.
264. Ibid.
265. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 20, p.185.
266. Op. cit., Burton, p.36.
267. Op. cit., Wilkinson, p.7.
268. Op. cit., Bettelheim, p.9.
269. Op. cit., Knierim, J.
270. Nancy Foster, Let Us Form a Ring.
271. With grateful thanks to Barbara Renold.
272. Zahlingen, Bronya, Plays for Puppets and
Marionettes.
273. Goldman, Birgitte, Waldorf Kindergarten
Newsletter, Fall 1994, p.24.
274. Perrow, Susan, Therapeutic Storytelling and Felce,
Josie, Storytelling for Life: Why Stories Matter and
Ways of Telling Them.
Spring 1991.
276. Sergio Prokofieff, The Cycle of the Year as a Path of
Initiation, p.12.
277. Ibid.
278. Steiner, R., GA 40, trans. by G. and M. Adams.
279. Op. cit., Prokofieff, p.11.
280. Ibid., p.12.
281. Ibid., p.6.
282. Steiner, R. quoted by S. Howard, oral
communication.
283. Op. cit., Prokofieff, p.61.
284. Janni, N., Waldorf Kindergarten Newsletter, Spring
1998, p.20.
285. Steiner, R. quoted Wilkinson, R., p.11.
286. Op. cit., Grahl, p.35.
287. Waldorf Kindergarten Newsletter, Fall 1994, p.23.
288. W. Ellersieks fingerplays demonstrated by
Kundry Willwerth, now available in the books,
Giving Love Bringing Joy and Dancing Hand,
Trotting Pony, available from WECAN Books.
289. With grateful thanks to Anna Vargas for this
section.
290. Steiner, R., Theosophy, p.30.
291. Ren Querido, The Mystery of the Holy Grail, p.16.
292. Ibid., p.5.
293. Ibid., p.49.
294. Steiner, R., quoted by Querido & Glas, Michaels
Struggle with the Dragon, p.77.
295. Ibid., p.28.
296. Op. cit., Querido, R. & W. Glas, p.30.
297. Ibid., p.29.
298. Querido, R., The Mystery of the Holy Grail, p.13.
299. Ibid.
300. Ibid., p.74.
301. Pfeiffer, E., On Rudolf Steiners Mystery Dramas,
p.34.
302. Steiner, R., The Inner Nature of Music and the
Experience of Tone, p.51.
303. Ibid.
304. Ibid., p.52.
305. Ibid., p.53.
306. Patterson, P., Spring, p.6.
307. Arnold Lobel, Newsletter, p.1.
308. Nancy Foster, Waldorf Kindergarten Newsletter,
Spring 1994, p.11.

120
 Endnotes

309. Op. cit., Patterson, p.7. 348. Lynne McTaggert, The Field: The Quest for the
310. Op. cit., Knierim, J., p.4. Secret Force of the Universe, in What Doctors
311. Ibid., p.8. Dont Tell You, 12, no.7.
312. Op. cit., Knierim, p.2. 349. Hall, A., ibid., p.126.
313. Visser, Norbert, Appendix, Live Music and 350. Ibid., p.121.
Recorded Sound. 351. Ibid., p.125.
314. Ping, Janene, Chanticleer, 5, issue 5, Jan. 1995. 352. Healy, J., ibid., p.64.
315. Bil Baird, The Art of the Puppet, p.46. 353. Dr. L. Litter quoted in What The Doctors Dont
316. Ibid., p.55. Tell You mazagine, 10, no.3, p.3.
317. Ibid., p.56. 354. Stevens quoted in Health and Nutrition, magazine,
318. Ibid. March 1998.
319. Ibid. 355. What Doctors Dont Tell You, 11, no. 7, p.12.
320. Ibid., p.58. 356. Healy, J., ibid., p.60.
321. Ibid., p.59. 357. Op. cit., What Doctors Dont Tell You, 11, no.7, p.5.
322. Ibid. 358. Ibid., 4, no.5, p.12.
323. Ibid.
324. Ibid., p.38.
325. Op. cit., Ping, J.
326. Ibid.
327. Op. cit., Baird, p.65.
328. Ibid.
329. Ibid.
330. Ibid., p.66.
331. Ibid.
332. Ibid., p.64.
333. Ibid., p.67.
334. Ibid., p.68.
335. Ibid., p.100.
336. Ibid., p.119.
337. Ibid., p.120.
338. Ibid., p.134.
339. Ibid.
340. Ibid., p.187.
341. Video at the National Museum of Puppetry,
Palermo, Sicily.
342. From Overview of the Waldorf Kindergarten Vol.1,
Waldorf Kindergarten Association of North
America.
343. Koch & Wagner, Individuality of Colour.
344. Alice A.Gorge, Creative Toymaking.
345. For The Princess in the Flaming Castle.
346. From Plays for Puppets and Marionettes by Bronya
Zahlingen.
347. Higher Nature magazine, Higher Nature Ltd.,
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