Michaelmas
Out of a fired ship, which by no way
But drowning could be rescued from the flame,
Some men leap’d forth, and ever as they came
Near the foes’ ships, did by their shot decay;
So all were lost, which in the ship were found,
They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drown’d.
—John Donne, “A Burnt Ship”
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SteinerBooks Statement on "AI"-Translation
Michaelmas 2024
In the last two decades, advances in technology have greatly changed the art and the business of publishing, in many ways for the better. With the relatively recent unveiling of "large language models," the possibilities for machines to do, for humans, the core human work of reading, writing, and thinking has reached a significant threshold, through which we must pass, wakefully.
At SteinerBooks, we acknowledge the usefulness of many tools of technology that help us in accomplishing our core mission as a non-profit publisher, which is to make the words, thought, and deeds of Rudolf Steiner both better known and more deeply understood in the English-speaking world.
While we do also recognize the utility and convenience of AI-driven "automated translation" in a multitude of private circumstances, to present and publish such works as valid English-language translations for the reading public would be a dereliction of our duty as a publisher and mission as an organization.
SteinerBooks both publishes and seeks to represent a school of thought that recognizes and advocates for the centrality of human agency, and an increasing consciousness of the same.
Furthermore, having seen, experienced, and closely worked with the results of effortless automated machine-translation, we are convinced that the counter-effort required to humanize such translations, in the sense of literary integrity—if it is even possible—does not justify their undertaking, and so we are committed to only publishing works-in-translation that have been executed by living, breathing, spiritual human beings.
John-Scott Legg
Executive Director
~ Featured Titles ~
The Archangel Michael
His Mission and Ours
Rudolf Steiner
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“The Michael age has dawned. Hearts begin to have thoughts. Enthusiasm no longer flows from mystical obscurity, but from the inner clarity that thought conveys. To grasp this is to receive Michael into one’s soul. Thoughts that today seek to grasp the spirit must spring from hearts that beat for Michael as the fiery cosmic prince of thought.” —Rudolf Steiner
For centuries, the tradition of the “mystical chronology” of the world’s seven archangelic regents has been part of Western esoteric teaching. According to this tradition, 1879 marked the return of the solar spirit Michael—the archangel of the Sun—to oversee earthly evolution. Steiner always placed his life and work in the service of Michael’s evolutionary task. And he recognized that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, humanity emerged from the Kali Yuga—the Dark Age—and entered the Age of Light. READ MORE
The Destiny of the Michael Community
Foundation Stone for the Future
Peter Selg
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In two related studies, Peter Selg tracks the groundbreaking of the first Goetheanum on September 20, 1913, in the context of what is known as the “Michael movement,” the primary active impulse brought by Rudolf Steiner in 1924, which explicitly indicates the anthroposophic movement and its official society. The author shows the fundamental importance of this beginning in Dornach. He illuminates the fateful goal of the “School for Spiritual Science” through Rudolf Steiner’s karma lectures, not only providentially in the sense that it involved individualities, but also with regard to the future development of human civilization. READ MORE
The Michael-Mystery
A Spiritual-Scientific View of the Michael-Imagination
and Its Representation in Eurythmy
Sergei O. Prokofieff
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The reign of the Michael-mysteries has held sway in humanity since the beginning of the contemporary Michael epoch in 1879. At the center of those mysteries is the true spiritual path to Christ, on which Michael, as the current Time spirit and cosmic countenance of Christ, would like to guide human beings.
The Michael-mysteries, moreover, represent the key for the entire future development of Earth evolution, with the aim that the Earth may become a new Sun in our cosmos, for Michael was the Archangel of the Sun from the beginning. READ MORE
A Story about Courage
Lottie, St Michael, and the Lonely Dragon
Beatrys Lockie and Sandra Klaassen
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Lottie is picking apples when a large and angry fire-breathing dragon appears—and it wants to eat her for breakfast! As the townsfolk rush to hide from the beast within their high walls, only Lottie wonders why the dragon is so fierce—could it just be lonely?
The Mayor doesn’t listen and calls on Saint Michael to slay the dragon. Can brave Lottie convince the great knight of her plan to save both the town and the dragon?
This is a charming story about courage, defying expectations and looking beneath the surface. READ MORE
Episode 1: the human-machine interface w/ Joe Allen
Episode 2: universalistic possibilities w/ Douglas Sloan
CW 10 (Which is your favorite?)
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
How Is It Attained?
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What the candidate for initiation must bring with him is courage and fearlessness developed in a certain connection. The esoteric student must deliberately seek out situations in which these virtues may be cultivated. In esoteric schooling, these should be developed very systematically. But life itself is also, especially in this respect, a good esoteric school—perhaps the best. To look danger calmly in the eye, to overcome difficulties without wavering: the esoteric student must be capable of such things. For example, when facing a danger, he must immediately summon in himself the feeling: “My fear serves no useful purpose; I should not even have it; I must think only of what is to be done.” In fact, he must develop to the point where, in situations that earlier would have caused him fear, “being afraid” and “losing courage” become impossible things, at least for his true, innermost feeling. Through self-education in this manner, the human being develops quite specific forces in himself that he needs if he is to be initiated into higher mysteries. Just as the physical human being needs the force of the nerves to make use of the physical senses, so the soul of the human being needs the force that is only developed in courageous and fearless natures.
—Rudolf Steiner, from Chapter 2 of CW/GA 10; Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten? This quotation is from the SteinerBooks-Chadwick Edition (2020): Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How Is It Attained?
