Goethe's Approach to Nature

Heather Thoma's Experiences with Raven Essences

Heather Thoma is an organic/biodynamic farmer in Ontario, who has worked for many years in community educational outreach.

How do we shift beyond intellectual understanding of environmental issues, toward true transformational change for healing with people and the Earth?  This question has motivated my work and personal exploration for many years.  While we know that change can heal, and may even know the steps we must take both individually and as a society, we often continue in our old habits: not honoring Nature as our dynamic partner and source of all life.  To deepen my embodied knowing and perception of the natural world, and then engage responsively with the land, I have pursued Goethe's approach to scientific practice.   

While best known for his poetic genius, Goethe himself felt that his work in botany and studies of color and light offered his most significant contributions to society.  He practiced scientific 'objectivity' not in abstract distancing from objects, but through a care-full discipline of allowing the phenomena themselves to be intimately revealed, each in their own way.  A Goethean observation of plants, or even a whole landscape, reveals 'things' as more dynamic beings in process, who like ourselves, are constantly 'becoming.'

This principle of becoming, or metamorphosis, is central to Goethe's approach:  the tiny winged seed of a maple becomes the small sprout, then young sapling, then huge crimson-leafed tree, and within this enormous range of stretching, growing change, still stands that same maple. An infant growing and living to adulthood, then experiencing the turns of old age, carries a seed of continuity of 'self' throughout her diverse life.  In all metamorphosis, there is transformation, yet a core essence or 'Urphanomen' of the being who is changing remains on some level recognizable, if we learn to open to it.  

To develop an embodied experience of these paradoxical truths, we must become like Goethe was:  creative, open and receptive, and yet solidly grounded and disciplined in strong connection with Nature's patterns unfolding.  Five different modes of perceiving can progressively reveal this dynamic inner nature of things.  Use the example of a young maple tree.  To start, we note and honor our first impressions when meeting this tree:  even if we see it every day, or if there's a negative response, what does it say to us right now?  For the next stage, make careful outward observations of the physical details of the tree.  Goethe's term for this was 'exact sense perception.'  Textures, smells, colors, height, number of leaves, location where it sits, etc.  This stage can be endless, and is even better done in a group.  Within the limits of the context, the more detail the better.  In the third stage, inwardly picture these details changing over time.  The timescale may be in hours, days, or years, but this part of the practice enhances the flexibility of our thinking, letting it move forward and backward, feeling the changing of the tree's form as an inner sensation in us, not just as an abstract idea.  Goethe called this 'exact sensorial imagination' ( Exakte sinnliche Phantasie ).  We stay with the details observed, do not get fanciful, but actively recreate the transformations in our 'mind's eye.'  A fourth stage is 'seeing in beholding' ( Anchauende Urteilskraft ):  to open to the diverse qualities of facts and feelings we have gathered in relation to this small maple, and receptively perceive any patterns that reveal themselves.  Over time, with this stage one can expect to see and experience Nature's patterns manifest in everything.  A fifth stage may then be reached:  'being at one with' the tree, not in its details, but in its wholeness.  Goethe referred to this as experiencing the ' Urphanomen ,' or archetypal phenomenon within the thing, that eventually makes it stunningly recognizable or resonant for us.

Taking up the task of a half hour a day in stillness with a tree, repeatedly returning to this care-full listening/feeling/observing space, can open, in Goethe's words, 'new organs of perception' in us.  Though richly rewarding, this process is sometimes not easy and I find growth and transformation come as a result of meeting the challenges that arise out of the practice.  The Raven Essence Project helps me to remain open to whatever comes, encouraging me to trust my experience as the learning deepens and transforms.  The more I experience healing with land and people as intimately intertwined, the more life becomes a creative relationship with Nature.   

For a selection of essays illuminating how a Goethean approach is used in a range of scientific work, see Goethe's Way of Science, edited by David Seamon and Arthur Zajonc, SUNY Press, Albany NY, 1998.

For a short biography incorporating his development as a scientist as well as artist, see Goethe and the Power of Rhythm: A Biographical Essay, by John Barnes, Adonis Press, Ghent, NY, 1999.

Using Flower Essences in a Psychotherapeutic Context

Janice Hall is a Core Energetic Psychotherapist, former R.N., B.A., and Clinical Member of OSP. She has a private practice in Toronto.

For the last 14 years, I have had my own practice as a holistic psychotherapist. I was trained in Core Energetics, which incorporates mind, body, emotions and spirit. Throughout my work with various clients I have found that certain other alternative kinds of therapy work very well in conjunction with my work to speed up the process of healing. I was very pleased in this last year to meet and work with Andrea Mathieson who founded Raven Essences. I find the best clients for me to send to Andrea are those with good ego strength who have done some therapy and are in a "stuck" place. Andrea uses her deep intuitive guidance to "read" the person and then divines just the right combination of essences that will help move the client in the direction their soul wants to go. What I love about the essences is that they work in such a subtle, gentle but powerful way to reach right in like a magnet to the soul's longing to create transformation. Here is one example of transformation.

Donna has been struggling for a long time with anxiety around relationships with herself and others in her life.  The anxiety would actually 'freeze' her ability to communicate and function. I have been working with this client for five years, getting closer and closer very slowly to develop her ability to function well in relationship. Although I tried many techniques, including body work based in Core Energetics and Relational work, she remained stuck in the same pattern of anxiety. 

Donna had a session with Andrea and started taking an essence that Andrea made up for her. I was astounded at how she had shifted the next time I saw her.  She was open to her own intuition as never before and able to ask and receive the guidance she needed within herself in order to relieve her anxiety. Donna was calmer and able to be in relationships with others more profoundly. I do believe that this client would have got to the point she is now eventually but I believe the essence sped up the process in a safe and deep way.

After my clients have had a session with Andrea, and with their permission, I discuss with Andrea what she picked up in her assessment and then I can use that information in my work with that client. I find the essences work in speeding up the healing process so that we can get at and move more quickly through the issues without so much fear being present for the client. Even if I do not get permission to speak with Andrea from my clients, I still find remarkable shifts happening that the client and I can integrate into their lives.