A North-American Anthroposophical Festival in celebration of the centenary
of the founding of the General Anthroposophical Society
August 10-16, 2023
Come together with us this summer to celebrate 100 years
since the founding of the Anthropological Society.
This celebration will take place at the centre of our continent in the Interlake region of Manitoba,
one hour north of Winnipeg.
This location is accessible not only for people from across Canada
but also for those in the United States.
At the heart of this celebration is a question of
what it means to take initiative in the broadest sense
and to stride into the future consciously.
Part of this process is to consider how the laying of the Foundation Stone
in the hearts of members has been cultivated.
How have we been able to realize the reality of the Christmas Conference as a Turning Point in Time?
What are the imaginations that can be developed that will help guide anthroposophy into the future?
We will be celebrating anthroposophical initiatives across the continent.
We will explore how these initiatives, working in the wider culture, can become bridges
from anthroposophy to spirit-inspired people and endeavours both regionally and across the land.
Development of the arts and reaching out to young people are critical for this bridge-building process.
They are the major building blocks for the event.
Special Guests
Contributors from the Goetheanum: Dr. Constanza Kaliks and Dr. Peter Selg
This will truly be a once in a lifetime event. We hope you can join us.
Festival Program
English (PDF)
Festival Program
French (PDF)
Working Together Groups
The Anthroposophical Movement, Its Biography and Future Development
Facilitators: Dr. Peter Selg and Dr. Constanza Kaliks
Earth Healing Through Spiritual Agriculture
Facilitators: Alex Tuchman, Monika Pudelko, Robert Karp
Anthroposophy in the Americas
Facilitators: Sebastian Bilbao, Dr. Gopi Krishna, Joan Mele
The Kenya Project, Changing Children’s Lives for the Good
Facilitators: Sarnia Guiton and Dominic Mwaura
Cain and Abel – Bridging Traumatic Family Divides through the Lifespan
Facilitator: Yiana Belkalopolos
Indigenous Voices
Facilitator: Facilitators: Aiona Anderson and John Winkler, Erich Otten, Unchatwa, Wendy Charbonneau, Elizabeth Carmack, Tom Altgelt
Creating Together Groups
Creating Together – Group “A”
Novalis: “The World Must Be Romanticized.”
Facilitators: Bruce Donehower, Patricia Dickson
Creating Together – Group “B”
Parzival & Feirefiz – A New Grail Narrative, Creating A Festival Celebration
Facilitator: The Parcival Project
To donate to the financial assistance fund for those who need support to attend please go to:
Then click on the drop down menu: Apply your donation to a fund set up by this charity
and then scroll way down and click on the last option for the Manitoba Festival.
Your donations are greatly appreciated.
From the January Anthroposophical Society in Canada Enewsletter
An Interview with Rob McKay
by Susan Koppersmith
Robert McKay, who lives in Toronto, is the Chair of the Board of Rudolf Steiner College Canada and a member of Anthroposophy in Toronto. He has a special interest in the meditative path. He provides workshops and lectures on anthroposophical meditation, always beginning with the important caveat for participants that he is not qualified as a spiritual teacher. He offers his partial and incomplete understanding of anthroposophical meditation as a basis for honest conversation amongst seekers.
Robert is part of the planning group of the 2023 North American Festival in Manitoba. We are all happy that he can offer some lectures at the Festival and a Working Together group entitled: An Introduction to Anthroposophical Meditation, which will meet over four days. These sessions will include opportunities to practice some of the meditations Dr. Steiner recommends. I was able to talk with him over Zoom and ask him a few questions about what he wants to bring to the Festival:
Susan: Rob, why is meditation important? Couldn’t someone just decide to be a better person and then hope for the best?
Rob: Provided we are seriously trying to be a good person, we are on the path to spiritual awakening. When someone undertakes meditation, they accelerate a normal developmental process. So why would a person want to develop more quickly? We are all already on the “slow-and-gentle-as-it-can-be” path of karma and reincarnation. The only real answer is love for others, love for the world. Every step that an individual takes through meditation is important for themselves, for others, and also the world. Some people may even reach a point where they can conduct their own spiritual research and bring healing and transformative resources back to the rest of us. Through meditation, individuals align themselves, little by little, with divine purpose and cosmic harmony. We do this by trying to be more truthful in our thinking, more loving in our feeling life, and more effective with the will life. The spiritual world reacts to our rhythmic work in meditation by giving us more ability but also more challenges. It is in fact the golden rule of the anthroposophical meditative path that for every one step in spiritual development, one must take three steps in the development of one’s character. Otherwise, one can fall prey to temptations that one doesn’t have the inner strength to overcome.
Susan: The title of one of your afternoon groups is “You Are Designed to Achieve Enlightenment.” This is an interesting choice of words! Do you think our universe is a friendly one?
Rob: At every moment of our life, we are bathed in gifts that come from the universe. We can hardly understand the attention, care and generosity that the spiritual world offers every human being. Ask yourself, who is working with your neurology right now? What makes sure that your digestive system functions properly? What makes it possible for you to see colours, etc, etc? These are all moment-by-moment gifts of actual spiritual beings that create reality. We aren’t normally aware of these beings, and this too is part of the help they give us. They recede from the stage, so to speak, so that we have the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them. This is how we develop strength to be independent and stand on our own two feet.
Susan: Another one of your groups has to do with working with spiritual texts. Have you had an experience you would like to share from your own life where working with a verse or mantra has changed things for you or given you strength?
Rob: First, I think it is worth pointing out that verses are not poems. Mantras come from fiery experiences initiates have in the spiritual world. The initiate finds a language which expresses this experience. To work with a mantra is a bit like clicking on a computer link which takes one to another place on the internet. Of course, this is a crude analogy, but it does give a picture of what happens. By using a mantra, the individual is gradually able to connect to the being (or beings) in the spiritual world that is the source of the verse. To achieve this connection, it is important to learn the mantra by heart so you can play it in your soul, so to speak, as a musician would with his instrument. By doing so, you are creating a conduit back to the spirit world. If one works with a mantra over time, the spiritual world reaches back to you. The individual reaches a pivot-point where instead of the feeling, I am working with the mantra, one feels, now the mantra is working on me. Every morning, I work with this mantra from Rudolf Steiner:
In purest outpoured Light
Shimmers the Godhead of the world.
In purest Love toward all that is
Flows the god-hood of my soul.
I rest within the Godhead of the world;
There shall I find myself,
Within the Godhead of the world
In this meditation, I imagine pure light coming down through my head through my larynx and into my heart; this light becomes love which radiates out to the world. After working with this mantra over time, this ability to radiate love can show-up in daily life. It comes to mind when I am having a challenge. If I begin to feel annoyed and tested in some way, I can summon this experience from the mantra, or it will show up spontaneously. I have a sense of the light from above and experience it flowing down to my heart and radiating out as love to the person or situation I am dealing with. Suddenly a moment that might have gone badly is given a turn for the better. You can find yourself rising to love the person or situation. Out of the love, a way forward is often found. A kind of magic has taken place!
Susan: Rob, thanks so much for your time and inspiring thoughts about the meditative life. I look forward to seeing you at the Festival in Manitoba in August!
Updates from past Anthroposophical Society in Canada Enewsletters
Update for the 2023 North American Festival in Manitoba: An Interview with Bruce Donehower
by Susan Koppersmith
(from the December, 2022 Enews)
Bruce Donehower, who lives in Fair Oaks, California, is the leader of the North American Section of the Literary Arts and Humanities. He is a scholar of British and German Romanticism with a special interest in Novalis. He is a poet, novelist, essayist, musician, storyteller, and translator. He facilitates the almost weekly Section Zoom meetings on research projects dealing with William Shakespeare, Goethe, Novalis, James Joyce and many other subjects.
Update for the 2023 Manitoba Festival and an Interview with Corinna Sons
by Susan Koppersmith
(from the November, 2022 Enews)
Excitement is building!
Look on our Society’s website to click on the yellow banner where you can see emerging details of the North American Festival which will take place near Winnipeg from August 10th to 16th, 2023. This Festival, That Good May Become, will celebrate the mystery of human initiative and one hundred years of the re-founding of the world-wide Anthroposophical Society.
A Visit to the Festival Site
by Kim Hunter (Festival Organizer)
(from the October, 2022 Enews)
In space, it was, for me, an epic journey of around 10,000 km by van; In time it took 5 weeks. The first stop, on Vancouver Island was a West Coast Institute board retreat at Ruth and Michael Kerr’s near Duncan. The eastern end-point was at the early childhood teacher training in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and the south-western point a meeting of the North American Collegium in San Francisco, California.
