Archetype projects into ‘forms’, as Steiner found

Culture stylist Rudolf Steiner wrote of recurrent organic shapes as ‘forms’, the same label that Plato had used to explain how archetype manifests in culture. ‘Form’ was also at the core of biology science in Steiner’s time: “Forms… in higher worlds, cast their shadow pictures to the physical plane.” He also recognised cultural crafts as subconscious behaviour that could be known: “Development of clairvoyance leads humans to the realm behind the senses... Art is the divine child of clairvoyant vision, which lives as unconscious feeling in the soul.” But our conscious logic struggles to grasp archetype: “Salient feelings [from] no conscious reason or cause… are ignored, or attributed to some physical thing.” Yet we could have conscious access to archetype: “We must learn to sense how the spiritual world speaks to us… to find those regions from where gods speak, we turn our eyes to… windows. There we would be shown what lives in people who… tread the path from physical to spiritual world.” This post defines and demonstrates the structuralist anthropology model of subconscious expression of archetypal structure, in a Steiner artwork at the Goetheanum, now a Swiss National Heritage site.

The Externsteine engraving’s two trees: Cross versus pillar

A Medieval design of the Deposition of Christ’s body from the cross, engraved on the side of the Externsteine in Germany, expresses the usual five layers of archetypal structure (Furter 2014). Rudolf Steiner or Edith Mayron may have seen a sketch or photo of the Externsteine engraving, and subconsciously used it as a model for their Goetheanum state statue group. Both works include cosmic tree symbols. The medieval site is in Teutoburg forest, near Horn-Bad Meinbert, North Rhine Westphalia, used from the 900s to the 1400s.