Light on Life

Light on Life: The Golden Blade 2000

What is the meaning of a life?

This 52nd edition of The Golden Blade continues the themes of Destiny and Community by bringing narrative, biographical, literary, medical, and karmic considerations to shine a light on life.

Can we discern significant correspondences, even patterns, in what might otherwise seem to be a random sequence of events? Can we and do we discern the essential and the inessential details in our individual stories? Are we able to recognize the crucial encounters we experience in life?

Developing such essential life skills can help us to realize the intentions we have set for ourselves in our present incarnation. The contributors to this issue describe their processes and insights in their quests to make sense of life.

C O N T E N T S: 

“Glimmers of Truth” — Dorit Winter
“Archetypes in Biography” — Henning Köhler
“A Reluctant Autobiographer” — Doré Deverell
“Telling Encounters” — Matthias Wais
“Coleridge: A Life Illumined” — Coralee Schmandt
“A Biographical Fragment” — Nick Thomas
“Childhood Illnesses: Spiritual Births” — Bob Dudney
“Verifying Karma Research” — Enge, Smit, and Schage

About this Publication

The aim of The Golden Blade was to bring the outlook of Anthroposophy to bear on questions and activities of evident relevance to the present, in a way which may have lasting value. It was founded in 1949 by Charles Davy and Arnold Freeman, who were its first editors, and continued every year until 2009.

The title derives from an old Persian legend, according to which King Djemjdid received from his God, Ahura Mazdao, a golden blade with which to fulfil his mission on Earth. It carried the heavenly forces of light into the darkness of earthly substance, thus allowing its transformation. The legend seems to point to the possibility that man, through wise and compassionate work with the Earth, can one day regain on a new level what was lost when the Age of Gold was supplanted by those of Silver, Bronze and Iron. Technology could serve this aim; instead of endangering our planet’s life, it could help to make the Earth a new Sun.