This three-month course offers an exploration of art and creativity as a psychological-spiritual journey, drawing its inspiration from what has been called the ‘Grail path’ of inner Self-development. The programme adopts a ‘spiritual scientific’ approach, based largely on the ‘Grail science’ of Rudolf Steiner, but also establishing respectful dialogue with the complementary ‘Grail psychology’ of Carl Jung. Robert Sardello has written: ‘’Steiner belongs more to the Aristotelian line, Jung to the Platonic’’: there is great value in juxtaposing the views of these two masters and allowing them to become mutually illuminating.
Weekly lecture presentations offer a variety of perspectives on the theme, followed in each instance by complementary meditative and artistic exercises arising from each topic, always in consolidation of the key idea that inner schooling is necessarily always artistic just as much as artistic work entails crisis, self-confrontation and individual growth.
Lecture programme:
01 The ‘Science of the Grail’, the Sophia principle and the artistic path of ‘inner schooling’.
02 The ‘Three worlds’ and the ‘Twelve senses’: creativity and contemporary art practice.
03 ‘I, Thou, Earth and Cosmos’. Twelve archetypal world views and the phenomenology of self-transformation.
04 From Goethe to Bauhaus and beyond: what artists can learn from ‘Romantic science’ and ‘innocent’ observation.
05 The creative matrix of the world: Artistic journeys into and out of ‘The Realm of the Mothers’.
06 Dance of the Muses: The Seven Philosophical Moods and the Seven Liberal Arts.
07 Art as Alchemy, Colour, the Rainbow Bridge and the Green Snake.
08 Apollo and Dionysus: the ‘two sources of art’ and the ‘two original sins of art’.
09 The ‘Three worlds’, the ‘Threefold human being’ and the stages of ‘higher knowledge’. The significance of waking, dreaming, and sleeping in self-development and in the creative process.
10 The Four Elements and the Four Ethers: The ‘Fourfold human being’ and the ‘Fourth dimension’ in art.
11 The Seven Planes of reality and the Seven Archetypal Arts: synaesthesia and the ‘Total artwork’.
12 The Shadow of the Sphinx: Meeting the Lower Guardian on the creative journey to the True Self.
- 12 lectures
- 3 workshops
- Reading material
- Monthly art and ‘spiritual science’ exercises
- Membership of dedicated student forum, hosted on Facebook
- Additional videos, art, articles and reading and film recommendations throughout the programme
The live Zoom workshops are scheduled on Saturdays. There will be one every month, 3 in total. These workshops are 2- hours long, including time for Q&A, and start at 3.00 PM London/ 10.00 AM New York. All workshops are recorded for later viewing for anyone unable to attend to live, or for the purposes of those wishing to rewatch them.