# The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1912–1918

## GA 277a — 24 August 1915, Dornach

### The Apollonian Course VIII

**On the origin of language**

Eurythmic dance is truly a language. Nowadays, languages are Ahrimanic. In the past, sounds could be formed after a movement had been made. Eurythmy: reproduction of sound through the speech organs. That is what is appropriate to the world about it. // Eurythmic dance is truly a language, a temple language. Originally, the sound was formed after the movement. Language is nothing more than a reproduction of these movements through the speech organs. Tongue and larynx eurythmize. // The eurythmic formation of sounds is to be understood as an imitation of the gestures of the speech organs. There are two theories in external science about the origin of language:

1. The Wauwau theory (Max Müller)

The origin of language is listening to the sounds of nature. People heard the sounds made by creatures. Imitation theory. So: woof-woof, meow, scurry-scurry, moo, and so on.

Language arose through imitation of the sounds of the environment.

2. The Bimbam theory

All beings, every creature, has a (hidden) sound within them, like a bell, and one only has to strike it, bring it out. And just as a bell has a sound within it, so every human being has language within them.

All correct and all incorrect. But language arose from both. However, we must search for deeper reasons, dig deeper.

**Bending and stretching – vitality and aura**

1. Stretching releases vitality;  
2. Bending: vitality consumes me.

1. Stretching

If we want to empathize more and more with the essence, we must feel that with every stretching, something of our will goes out. You must feel: something of your will goes out and an illumination in the surrounding aura emerges, a radiance, an auric ray.

Stretching: something that goes from the inside to the outside. This stretching is such that you can feel: I am doing something that continues outside. Moving the rod also has this effect. Everything I do with the rod continues outside. The continuation is the rod. Consciously continuing through the rod. // You could not move the rod if something did not come from outside: the heaviness. We can throw the stick, then we continue the aura outward, the aura is consciously continued.

The stick can be replaced by a bud (a bud is not a branch) or anything that imitates a bud, e.g., an open or tied fir tree.

I am doing something that continues outward. With the staff, for example – held,

throwing and catching – the staff does something for itself. The bud imitates the staff.


2. Bending

Every bend draws auric power from outside and allows it to flow inward; I absorb it. When bending, life force is consumed inside, // used inside, // the life force flowing in from outside consumes me. The life force consumes the human being, wears the human being down.

Bending corresponds to taking something alive into one's hands, corresponds to absorbing the auric into oneself = a forked stick or a branch. The branch corresponds to absorption. Imitations of the branch:


Stretching and bending contrasted

When stretching, with the staff that is dead, I radiate the auric.  
The life of the branches = absorbing the auric within oneself.

When you stretch, you consume life force.  
When you bend, the life force consumes you.

Stretching—the will stepping out, the aura stepping forward.  
Bending — drawing in the auric force.

The aura is consciously continued.  
Life force consumes people, wears people down.

Every letter that involves stretching allows something to flow out from the inside to the outside; I give away; this is where you use up your life force.  
When bending, the life force consumes me, I absorb it.

Every letter: stretching outward.  
Every letter bending inward.

Hand stretching with a stick.  
Hand bending with a twig.

When stretching, life force is consumed.  
Diana When bending, the absorbed auric energy consumes the person (they burn up inside if they always bend). So when bending, take something living in your hand: a branch.


A twig, a fork / The life force consumes / the person, wears down the person / Bud

A bud is not yet a twig (it is a rod). This has been incorporated into architecture. Everything that imitates the bud is like a rod. In earlier times, one carried the bud, the other the branch. This gave rise to the column.

Expressing the mood of Mars with a bud or rod. // Strong moods — moods of Mars through arming the hand — armed with a bud.

Expressing Mercury mood with a branch or forked staff. // Mercury mood — inward-going, expressed by the branch.


[LMS:] Examples of Mars moods “God said, Let there be light” [Genesis 1:3]


and “The light shone in the darkness” [John 1:5] - [EvD:] There were no accompanying words. He [Rudolf Steiner] demonstrated it! - [LMS] the example for “bending”: clench your fist, hold the power within you au — a — u — au.