Gnomes in Waldorf settings are mainly encountered in the early years of education. The question is: What is the meaning of gnomes and dwarves, why are they so popular, and what role do they play in the curriculum?
Anyone investigating the Waldorf method of education becomes aware that gnomes cling to its many-coloured cloak and peep from its folds.
Over the years, they multiplied to include forest gnomes, moon gnomes, dark-skinned gnomes, rainbow gnomes, Christmas gnomes, days-of-the-week gnomes, weather gnomes, four season gnomes …
Scrolling down seemingly endless Google Image listings, one perceives a worrying and apparently unstoppable trend: Gnomies are capturing the Waldorf brand and becoming its symbol.
Parents with a talent for handcrafts enjoy producing lovingly fashioned figurines of tiny old men with pointy hats and long beards. Instructions abound: Knit Your Own Gnome, How to Make Weather Gnomes, Make a Silk Gnome, Creating Gnome Toys, and more.
Knitted, felted, whittled, sculpted and painted, “traditional Waldorf-style gnomes” are for sale at school shops, fairs and fundraisers; and of course on the internet.
WALDORF GNOMES
Authors and illustrators of children’s books create magical gnome worlds with captivating stories. Kindergarten teachers tell of gnomes in fairy tales and puppet plays.
Class teachers employ them to introduce letters and mathematical operations. Eurythmy teachers use them for imaginative movement exercises, for example:
Behold the dwarves inside the hill
Their tiny hammers are never still
They sing and work deep underground
And as they tap, the rocks resound:
Hack! Hack! The rocks we crack
Quake! Quake! The mountains shake
Bang! Bang! Our hammers clang
In caverns old we seek for gold
And crystals bright we bring to light
(Eileen Hutchins, Come Unto These Yellow Sands)
Children love these little creatures and enter easily into their imagined world of magic and mystery. Even so, they must not gain a materialistic concept of gnomes and dwarves.
GNOMES HISTORY
According to Wikipedia, gnomes are mythological creatures “introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depicted as small humanoids who live underground.”
“Paracelsus sought a universal knowledge that was not found in books or faculties.” So he wrote ‘A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits’, in which he first used the term gnomi (plural of gnomus, ‘earth-dweller’).
He drew on medieval folk tales of the three German-speaking countries, told by miners about ‘little men of the mountain’ called Bergmännlein.
At the time, miners were working underground in almost complete darkness. Always alert to the smallest sign of danger, their heightened senses were unusually atuned to the earth element around them.
Darkness and danger and heightened senses made men more able to experience the presence of spirits in the rocks and metals they mined. Medieval superstition took hold of their experiences and embroidered them freely.
Bergmännlein reportedly could be friendly or malicious. Sometimes these earth-spirits were heard to make tapping sounds, at other times they laughed eerily and bounced pebbles.
Some warned miners of imminent danger; others led them to a rich vein of ore. But they could also let loose an avalanche that buried an entire mountain village.
THE SHAPE OF GNOMES
Gnomes were visualised as being of tiny stature, flitting easily through narrow mine shafts and low tunnels where mortal men crouched and crawled and knocked their heads.
Their connection to the oldest element on earth was symbolised by a long beard that showed their great age, and they wore the protective leather apron of miners.
To pre-empt this, it is essential that educators reflect on the nature of elemental beings before employing them.
The pointed gnome hat is thought to be a remnant of an invisibility cloak featured in Germanic mythology, which may have morphed from ‘cape’ to ‘cap’.
LEGENDS OF GNOMES
Many European countries have legends of gnome-like beings. Germany’s Gnom and Switzerland’s Zwergli are loosely related to Ireland’s leprechaun, Scandinavia’s tomte, Iceland’s voettir, France’s lutin and Spain’s duende.
In 1549, Georgius Agricola, a supervisor of mines and contemporary of Paracelsus, wrote ‘De Animatibus Subterraneis’. This treatise on the ‘Mountain Spirit’ is reflected in Berggeist, a story the Brothers Grimm featured in their collection of old German Legends.
Agricola also describes friendly spirits in the homesteads of humans, mainly looking after livestock like Tomte Tummetott. Similar spirit-beings were sensed by others in field and forest.
19TH CENTURY GNOMES
Having gained a foothold in Grimm’s fairy tales, gnomes became popular characters in the nursery. From there they infiltrated the Romantic era and its literature that also helped Christmas and Santa along.
This development culminated in vastly popular garden gnomes of clay, first manufactured in Germany and spreading rapidly.
As lawn ornaments and characters of children’s books, gnomes played their part in Victorian kitsch and culture. And as their image crystallised in material form, the initial sensing of their rock-spirit nature was lost. Now they became interchangeable with other ‘little folk’.
This remained so until the early 20th century, when Rudolf Steiner among others worked for a renewal of spirit awareness in a contemporary manner. In this effort he persisted all his life, despite opposition and ridicule from religious and scientific camps.
Opposition and ridicule continue to this day, a hundred years after his death in 1925.
THE NATURE OF GNOMES
Rudolf Steiner described the nature of gnomes in many ways and in various lectures. For example in The Human Soul in Relation to World Evolution, GA 212:
“Today’s ‘enlightened’ people may laugh when reminded that older folks used to see gnomes in everything earthy. However, when knowledge is no longer obtained by means of combining abstract, logical thoughts, but by uniting ourselves through our thinking with the world rhythm, then we shall rediscover the elemental beings contained in everything of a solid earthy nature.”
In The Mysteries of the Sun and Death and Resurrection, GA 211:
“Of course, in a multitude, in many spiritual beings, in gnomes and nymphs, in sylphs and salamanders, in all possible other entities of the earth hierarchies, one saw the divine-spiritual; one saw nature spiritualized and ensouled.”
In Man as Symphony of the Creative Word, GA 230:
“In the solid earth element live spiritual beings of an elemental kind who are much cleverer than human beings. Even a person of extreme astuteness intellectually is no match for these beings who, as supersensitive entities, live in the realm of solid earth. One could say that just as man consists of flesh and blood, so do these beings consist of super-cleverness.“
“Another of their peculiarities is that they prefer to live in crowds. When one is in a position to find out how many of these cunning beings a suitable earthy object contains, then one can squeeze them out as if from a sponge – in a spiritual sense, of course – and out they flow in an endless stream.“
In Theosophy, GA 9:
“To the lower species of such beings belongs all that is described by observers of the spiritual world as salamanders, sylphs, undines and gnomes. It should not be necessary to say that such descriptions are not to be considered reproductions of the reality that underlies them.”
And “such descriptions are not to be considered reproductions of the reality that underlies them” proves beyond doubt that Steiner was not talking of tiny bearded men with pointy hats.
A CHANGING WORLDVIEW
Steiner also described how humanity’s primal, dreamlike unitedness with the spirit forces of their environment gradually gave way to an awakening of the intellect.
The great historical epochs record this development with cultural achievements which show that historic progress was linked to incremental changes in consciousness.
As mankind shifted its gaze from the spirit-world to the earthly environment, an increasingly analytical focus on physical things obscured the indwelling spirit. Common spirit vision faded away, leaving mere traces of its wisdom in myths and legends and fairy tales.
Each new step towards a scientific worldview was purchased with a greater disconnectedness from the divine spiritual home-realm that used to be accessible to all.
This change in consciousness and self-perception brought an exhilarating sense of empowerment, independence, adventure, discovery and freedom on the one hand – and on the other feelings of separation, loss, loneliness, anxiety and depression.
Note: Each human biography repeats this development around the ninth year, when the so-called Rubicon separates us irrevocably from infancy’s blissful unitedness with the world.
Irrespective of ethnic, cultural and religious heritage, everyone experiences the expulsion from Paradise that is described in the First Book of Moses with profound spiritual images. These do not tell of physical places and historical events but of inward matters that are relevant to all.
The Waldorf curriculum makes the universal relevance of Genesis the focus of Class 3, aware of the Rubicon’s importance for mental and physical health in the long term.
WHY GNOMES?
By contrast, there is no similarly compelling reason to include gnomes in the Waldorf curriculum. They are not mentioned in any of Steiner’s indications for teachers and can be put aside completely.
As Waldorf teachers we are free to decide if, when and how to bring fairy tale creatures into our lessons. And freedom lies in determining the reasons for the choices we make.
Whatever we do: We must be completely aware WHY we are choosing to do THIS and not something else – most especially in the classroom.
“Because everyone else is doing it” is just not good enough in the Waldorf context.
GNOMES IN A PLAY
As a young Waldorf pupil I took part in a beautiful play about the gathering of elemental spirits at the summer solstice: Groups of gnomes, nymphs, sylphs and fire spirits report to Pan, the god of nature, what they have been doing all year.
The Swiss Eurythmy teacher Marguerite Lobeck-Kürsteiner wrote this Mittsommerspiel in the tradition of Greek mystery plays which sought to show what lies behind the visible world. And as we brought the parts to life in Class 4, we understood that although our characters were invisible, their effects were not.
Together with fairy tales and the great myths and legends that followed, this play trained our openness to non-material aspects of the world around us. Such openness naturally results more easily in a deeper love and care for the manifestations of nature.
Having adored the play as a child, as a teacher I wanted to rehearse it in my German lessons with the same age group. First I wrote and illustrated my play script by hand, as a teaching aid that fascinated the pupils:
The study of Steiner’s descriptions of elemental spirits had given me a livelier idea of their role. Here is a selection of my collected excerpts regarding gnomes:
“The earthly solid is based on spiritual entities from the sphere of the elementary spirits. Older intuitive clairvoyance called them ‘gnomes’ and the like. Today’s intellectualism regards this as fantasy.
What we call them is unimportant, but underlying everything solid on earth is a world of spiritual elemental beings who, I might say, in their physicality, invisible to human senses, have a greater degree of intellect, of pure rationality, than we humans have ourselves.
They are extremely clever compared to us humans, clever to the point of cunning, clever to the point of speculation, clever to the point of the shrewd foreknowledge of that which always gets in the way of man in the work he does based on his lesser intellectuality.”
“If you dig into metallic or stony ground, you find beings which manifest at first in remarkable fashion. […] They seem able to crouch together in vast numbers, and when the earth is laid open, they appear to burst asunder.”
“What one calls moral responsibility in man is entirely lacking in them. What they do, they do automatically, and at the same time it is not unlike what the human intellect does. They possess wit in the highest degree. Their nature prompts them to play all sorts of tricks on man.”
“The root spirits are quite special earth folk, invisible to outer view but in their effects that much more visible; for no root could develop if it were not for that which is mediated between the root and the earth realm by these remarkable spirits which bring the mineral element of the earth into flux, in order to conduct it to the roots of plants. I am of course referring to the underlying spiritual process.”
This last sentence makes clear the essence of gnomes and other elementals: “I am of course referring to the underlying spiritual process.”
Whenever someone says or writes, “Steiner believed in gnomes”, s/he is evidently ignorant of the situation.
“These root spirits, which are everywhere present in the earth, get a particular sense of wellbeing from rocks and ores. This is the place where they belong, where they are conveying what is mineral to the roots of the plants.
And they are filled with an inner spirituality that we can only compare to the inner spirituality of the human eye and the human ear. For these root spirits are in their spiritual nature entirely sense.
Apart from this they are nothing at all; they consist only of sense, a sense which is at the same time intellect, which does not only see and hear but immediately understands what is seen and heard. It not only receives impressions but also ideas.”
Reflecting on this passage, we can gain a mental image of Planet Earth as an organism whose intelligent sense perception is constantly taking in communications from the universe around it.
“[…] through the plants, which to them are what rays of light are to us, the gnomes take in the ideas of the universe and carry them in full consciousness from metal to metal, from rock to rock within the earth.”
Having studied these and other passages, I painted four poster-sized illustrations for our lessons, one for each group of elementals. These inspired the children’s bookwork and helped them enter into their parts imaginatively.
Note: Subject teachers are rarely able to create blackboard drawings as a teaching aid that remains in place for many weeks. This drawback inspired me to produce a set of poster-sized portable blackboards of thin and light plywood, stored safely behind a door in the school office.
On my way from one language lesson to the next, I simply deposited one illustrated lesson content and picked up another. This gave me freedom, and class teachers appreciated not having to give up precious blackboard space.
In the case of the Class 4 play, my painted posters made it possible to use them year after year.
EDUCATION VS INDOCTRINATION
As teachers, studying Steiner’s indications on the nature of elemental beings helps us to find images and explanations that are suited to children and let a non-material reality shine through.
Is this indoctrination?
Only in the sense that any kind of teaching transmits a doctrine, a particular way of viewing the world – even when it regards itself as soberly factual.
Since materialistic science is now taught in nearly every school, most people remain unaware that this acquired ocular informs their world view.
Wikipedia: “Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain, and predict natural phenomena.”
And: “Visual representation of a Schwarzschild wormhole. Wormholes have never been observed, but they are predicted to exist through mathematical models and scientific theory.”
In effect, Higgs bosons, quarks, protons, neutrons, mesons and similar inventions to explain invisible forces at work in solid matter – something all children are now taught to believe – can be regarded as ‘gnomes’ by another name.
The current mindset, geared as it is to mathematical formulae and scientific theories, is the result of a fairly recent type of education. Because it is so general, its particular doctrine is no longer perceived and becomes a blind spot.
Any lesson content is the result of choices. Where this content is government-approved and prescribed and must not be questioned, the criteria of indoctrination are met.
Franklin Veaux on Quora: “Indoctrination tells you what to think. Education teaches you how to think. Indoctrination tells you not to challenge what you are told. Education gives you tools for examining everything you are told. Indoctrination tells you not to question. Education teaches you how to question.”
EDUCATION TOWARDS FREEDOM
Teaching is not indoctrination when its declared aim is to produce children with an open, well-informed, independent and questioning mind. The entire Waldorf curriculum and its methods are designed to raise people who are able to think for themselves.
When gnomes make an appearance in true Waldorf lessons, they are portrayed as a traditional symbolic image that points towards invisible forces at work in the world.
Nothing in Waldorf teaching is intended to make children believe that little bearded men with pointy hats are scurrying about, influencing the day’s events, visible to those who pay attention.
Where this is done, it is done in error and is rightly called out.
Staring at roots and rocks to look for gnomes is to misunderstand their nature. Making them part of the day’s tasks and events creates morally questionable fantasy fiction.
Such things have been known to alienate parents as well as the press, quite understandably.
Waldorf Education is not a “gnome cult” and true Waldorf teachers do not “believe in gnomes”. As with everything else, they study the concept, gain insightful knowledge, and then find ways to represent it authentically in their teaching.
GNOMES IN LESSONS
For example, in the adventurous letter stories which I created for my Class 1, a gnome appears briefly as the helpful guide who accompanies Alf and Beth underground on the first part of their long journey.
Unusually, because the storyline made it possible, we found three letters at once in the image of a dark, dusty door revealed by the light from the little lamp of the good grey gnome.
The concept of silent letters was touched upon for the first time, simply because the secretive spirit-nature of the gnome is so satisfyingly reflected in his unspoken initial.
Months later, the children collected a varnished board and chose their preferred colours of Stockmar modelling beeswax, already unwrapped and pre-cut to small pieces.
“Now we shall give form to the gnomes of our verses and songs, and then they can go to work in our crystal cave on the Nature Table here, hidden under a snowy blanket.”
This activity linked back to the letter story of a crystal cave that provided the letter C. Of course the class noticed this with delight and pointed it out eagerly.
While the children modelled their figurines, we sang a song from our Morning Circle which engaged everyone’s imagination:
Little dwarves, so short and strong
Heavy-footed march along
Every head is straight and proud
Every step is firm and loud
Pick and hammer each must hold
Deep in earth to mine the gold
Ready over each one’s back
Hangs a little empty sack
When their hard day’s work is done
Home again they march as one
Full sacks make a heavy load
As they tramp along the road
(Molly de Havas)
At the end of the year, the children took part in our school’s Midsummer Pageant. As groups of elemental beings, Class 1 rose to the challenge of their first public performance and provided a dreamy pentatonic chorus for Class 2’s fairy tale characters:
When we journey far from home
Through the world of Earth and Stone
Water, Air
May we with care
Greet and help the beings
Who sustain Life everywhere (…)
(Deborah Leah, for the story The Queen Bee)
IN SUMMARY
Appealing to children and adults alike as figures of folklore, gnomes may at times yield suitable imagery for bringing certain concepts alive in the classroom and on the stage.
Even so, they are certainly not a prescribed part of the Waldorf Curriculum.
Rudolf Steiner endeavoured to use his highly developed spirit vision for a widespread renewal of spirit awareness in a contemporary manner.
In The Festivals and Their Meaning:
“Much is said nowadays about the forces of nature, but little enough about the beings behind these forces. Our forefathers spoke of gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders, but to see any reality in such ideas is regarded today as sheer superstition (…)
Mankind will land itself in a blind alley if it fails to acquire a spiritual understanding of these things.”
When Emil Molt’s initiative led to the founding of the first Waldorf School, it was desired by all participants that this new kind of education would raise children in a way that enabled them to remain sensitive to the spiritual background of the world, mindful of the natural environment and aware of the greater whole.
This timely impulse has been largely ignored or rejected, and a century later it is easy to see the destructive effects which a materialistic mindset is having on the world.
There can be no healing unless this mindset is changed. And the urgently needed change must begin with a different kind of education – the kind of education Waldorf pedagogy strives to provide.
