Sergei O. Prokofieff

Sergei O. Prokofieff (1954–2014) was a Russian-born anthroposophical teacher, philosopher, and spiritual researcher whose work centered on the esoteric Christology at the heart of Rudolf Steiner’s path. Born in Moscow as the grandson of the composer Sergei Prokofiev, he studied fine arts and painting at the Moscow School of Art, encountered anthroposophy in his youth, and devoted his life to its deepening.

Prokofieff wrote his first book — Rudolf Steiner and the Founding of the New Mysteries — while living in Soviet Russia; it appeared in German in 1982 and in English translation in 1986. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he was a co-founder of the Anthroposophical Society in Russia. From 2001 until 2013 he served as a member of the Vorstand, the executive council of the General Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland; ill health required him to step down a year before his death in July 2014.

More than thirty of his books have appeared in English translation. The major works — The Twelve Holy Nights and the Spiritual Hierarchies, May Human Beings Hear It!: The Mystery of the Christmas Conference, The Cycle of the Year as a Path of Initiation, What Is Anthroposophy?, his profound study of the Foundation Stone Meditation, and many more — have become essential reference points for serious students of anthroposophy. His writing is rigorous, devotional, and morally serious; his books reward patient reading. He is among the most consequential anthroposophical writers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.