The Deed of Rudolf Steiner

For over 50 years, I (Christopher Houghton Budd) have been concerned with the Anthroposophical Society – its past, present and future. In what I hope is a well-informed albeit personal view, this project (and accompanying website) brings together the various ways I have addressed this. The project is intended for those who already, or one day might, carry the Deed of Rudolf Steiner in their hearts, meaning the refounding of the Anthroposophical Society during Christmas 1923, explored in detail in my book of the same name (available in English).

The idea of the site is to make clear the background to my various involvements in the Anthroposophical Society, of which I have been a member since 1972, as also of the School of Spiritual Science since 1979. Throughout that time, my work has been inspired by the Christmas Conference, prompted in part by my association with Jorgen Smit and his affirmation of the Society as the home of the School of Spiritual Science, with its 'structure' of three classes and various sections. Understanding the intention and significance of this is, therefore, a central aspect of my work.

Professionally, I am an economic and monetary historian specialising in finance and always seeking ways to weave Rudolf Steiner’s socio-economic ideas into current mainstream debates and policies. I am therefore especially concerned with the Society’s financial aspect. For example, in 2008, I recorded Inner and Outer Aspects of Associative Economics (Money: The Old and New Mysteries and Rudolf Steiner’s Unfinished Deed). Available here.  

My emphasis is on Steiner’s great clue concerning ‘money as bookkeeping’ and the need to develop accounting-based financial literacy (see associative-financial-literacy.com). I also coordinate the research work of colleagues in the Economics Conference of the Goetheanum, begun in 2002; while as a ‘flying around the world’ treasurer I work with treasurers worldwide to rest the finances of the Society on Rudolf Steiner’s economic and financial indications.

Indeed, the eye of the needle for associative economics is to apply it to the Anthroposophical Society itself, in particular by heeding Steiner’s three ‘calls’ concerning the way in which the Society is financed: members’ contributions, research funds and worldwide regular financial support from people generally (much in the manner of organisations like today’s Greenpeace).

Hope. Springs. Eternal.

The title is an unintended, but rescued allusion to Alexander Pope's phrase:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast / Man never is, but always to be blest / The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home / Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Laden with satire, Pope suggests we excuse life on earth by constantly putting all store in an after-life, rendering us indifferent to our circumstances and diminishing our need to wake up. But here, as three separate words – Hope. Springs. Eternal. –  they refer to my image that we can all derive hope from the Anthroposophical Society as long as we see it as a source of new initiatives born of the spiritual world and considered over a long time-frame.