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<\/div>\nStar Wars is an epic story which took the cinema world by storm, has endured, and gathered an unbelievable following. It’s a modern day fairy tale, whose strength and influence keeps on growing, just like the myths and legends of old which have survived for millennia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/div>\nOver the years, some people have observed parallels with anthroposophical concepts, and have wondered if George Lucas might\u2019ve been inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/a><\/div>\n\u201cSpiralpadawan\u201d considered this back in 2005, and\u00a0stated<\/a> on the \u201cJedi Council Forums\u201d that,\u00a0\u201cthe parallels in the archetypal imaging that are present in the movies and are bases for grasping Waldorf are the same. […] How I would have loved for someone to say… “Let’s watch [Star Wars] and I’ll explain Steiner to ya” it would have been a great AH HA moment! The fundamentals of Steiner’s work were not natural toys, foods, etc…. they were balance of spiritual forces, understanding development, temperaments, and our connection to the Universe. Once you have those basics down, man or woman, it’s easier to swallow the rest because you can grasp why.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Storytelling is a crucial part of the early years of Steiner education. The concept of archetypes is even mentioned in the Woods report<\/a>, for instance:\u00a0\u201cHistory begins with mythical and\u00a0archetypal\u00a0narrative in Classes 1 to 3.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0Also, \u201cfrom the age of ten to fourteen, […] the New Testament stories of the Gospels is one strand of the lesson content. The children should be familiar with the life of the Christ and should know some of the great,\u00a0archetypal\u00a0parables, such as the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. Up to about thirteen years these stories are accepted uncritically \u2013 the appeal is to the hearts of children and not their heads.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Storytelling is an appealing and creative way of teaching, and something every parent does time and again when entertaining their children. It is also one of the draws of Steiner-Waldorf education if you’re not aware of the deeper aspects of this pedagogy.<\/p>\n But is there any truth to the fact that the Anthroposophical archetypes can be found within the Star Wars mythology? After all, watching films and TV is strongly discouraged in these schools. Yet a recent revelation appears to confirm that this was indeed the case. This influence didn’t come from George Lucas, but from his then-wife, the renowned film editor, Marcia Griffin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Dr. Douglas Gabriel wrote an article<\/a>, and was interviewed by Julian Jonathan<\/a>\u00a0on the subject. He\u00a0describes how he and a few other fellow Anthroposophists ended up advising Marcia,\u00a0providing ideas and Anthroposophical concepts which became integrated into the very heart of the Star Wars saga, and influenced the first two trilogies.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was somewhat just by accident\u201d<\/span>, he told Jonathan regarding what would become his pivotal involvement.\u00a0\u201cI was a Waldorf student in a Waldorf institute in Michigan. I was coming out of the bookstore one day, and my teacher Dr. Werner Glass turned to me and said \u201cwould you come with me?\u201d. I followed him, we went into a room with a number of people. One of them was Marcia Griffin, the wife of George Lucas. [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cDr. Werner Glass had been very famous in the Anthroposophical world [\u2026] there\u2019s [a Waldorf school] in North Hollywood, which Dr. Glass had run. He was very familiar with at lot of the people in Hollywood, the stars, the actors, because they sent their children there. So he had somehow met Marcia, and she had taken courses from him I believe, in Anthroposophy. [\u2026]<\/p>\n \u201cThere were four students there that I had been in school with, and Marcia, and the two directors of the institute. [Werner] sat down and he said \u201cthis is my prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Douglas Gabriel, he\u2019s going to give you whatever you need\u201d. I had no idea what he was even talking about! [\u2026]<\/p>\n \u201cWerner, to my surprise, got up and left, and then the other director got up and left, and we were all sitting there looking at each other saying, “what are we going to do?\u201d\u201d<\/p>\n The Rewrite<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cOur job was to help [Marcia] in the second, third, fourth rewrite of it, I don\u2019t really remember,\u201d<\/span>\u00a0Dr. Gabriel continued.\u00a0\u201cShe said to us that it had been rejected two or three times, but [Lucas] had a contract for it, so if they could come up with a good screenplay, the movie would go forward, because of his fame and his power in Hollywood. [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSo my job would be like any Waldorf teacher: we had to turn this story into something that was an archetype that would be able to be a truth that is encapsulated in a schemata, an engram, a meme, whatever you want to call it; an archetype that works from beginning to end. I knew that once we had done that, then all these very strange characters that he had created – because really that\u2019s all the screenplay was that was shown to me: a list of characters. In the characters there were certain descriptions of kind of the plot and the way it was supposed to happen, but it was completely disjointed, didn\u2019t hang together. After hearing it, and hearing the very sad dialogue that was part of it at that time, there was no dynamic between the characters. So our job was to work that over for three days. It was kind of a think tank\u201d.<\/p>\n Archetypes<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cOnce [Marcia] had read this to us, I turned to her and said, \u201cwell what you really want is an adult fairy tale, a sci-fi fairy tale, on the level of C S Lewis\u2019\u00a0science fiction trilogy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAnd she said, \u201cyes, that\u2019s exactly what we want.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c\u201dWell let me first show you how a fairy tale works.\u201d So I stood up to the board, took a coloured chalk, and started to show.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery fairy tale, and every true myth, legend, fable or anything else, has a beginning and an end, and you go through catharsis. […] You come to some revelations throughout it, and then you reach the end, you get the goal or enlightenment, and then it\u2019s over.<\/p>\n \u201cWell if you have the right characters, everything all plays out, and all the dialogue comes naturally once you know the true nature of the archetype you\u2019re describing [\u2026].<\/p>\n \u201cArchetypes comes from either Carl Jung\u2019s version of the collective unconscious or the subconscious, or one can see very clearly in the Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the Russian fairy tales, that they come from dreams. They were the collective dreams of cultures. Those collective dreams came from the spiritual world and therefore they had to come in symbol and parable. You can\u2019t communicate spiritual thoughts in physical reality, that\u2019s the reason why in the fairy tale, anything can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n This belief in the spiritual world is very real for Anthroposophists, and by association, Steiner-Waldorf schools, as we\u2019ve explored previously<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe resolve of every fairy tale is, what?\u201d Dr. Gabriel continued. <\/span>\u201cYou meet the other, and you get married and then you get your kingdom. [\u2026]<\/p>\n \u201cSo what really happens in Star Wars as a fairy tale? Luke meets his other. Strangely enough his other is his sister. So Luke is the soul, but his sister Leia is the spirit. She is really the part of him that he has to say \u201coh at first I thought you were sexually attractive, now I have to find you spiritually attractive, and we must work together to defeat evil and create a new kingdom\u201d. And in fact they do. [\u2026]<\/p>\n \u201cSo there\u2019s the soul, evolving with the spirit, looking for the fairy princess, looking for the beautiful lilly, as Goethe says<\/a>, or looking for that other side of yourself, that spirit side. That\u2019s Luke\u2019s path.\u201d<\/p>\n The Anthroposophical Influence<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr. Gabriel was keen to state that the ideas he shared weren\u2019t his own,\u00a0\u201cthey\u2019re the ideas of Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy, Waldorf Education,\u00a0and all the many things that he created,\u201d<\/span>\u00a0he confirmed.\u00a0\u201cHe\u2019s the greatest genius of our time. [\u2026] \u201cI appreciate the fact that Marcia Griffin was a student of Rudolf Steiner’s, to some degree at least, from what I was told, and that she was very familiar with the concepts of Anthroposophy [\u2026]\u201d \u201cSo, you can really say that the spiritual concepts that Marcia Griffin brought into this script came directly from Anthroposophy. If you wanted to go any further with what a real Jedi warrior really is, you would study Anthroposophy, you\u2019d study the work of Rudolf Steiner.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Fleshing Out the Characters<\/strong><\/p>\n The changes that Dr. Gabriel suggested affected the very heart of the story and involved all the main characters of the original saga:\u00a0\u201csome of those characters existed,\u201d<\/span>\u00a0he clarified\u00a0\u201cbut they didn\u2019t fit in, and so [Lucas\u2019] descriptions just make them go off a cliff. [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI would say that I was just a contributor, but I would like to say is that I helped create a framework for it, in my mind that\u2019s what I say, because I see the picture I drew on the board [\u2026]<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d say, \u201cit doesn\u2019t fit, scratch the character. No, change that character. That evil character? that\u2019s his dad now. And now Luke has a twin.\u201d \u201cOh, so the twin here, goes to here, and this character goes to this character.\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d We have to make this hang together, it has to be tangible.\u201d<\/p>\n The Hero<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cLuke needed to be a hero, and not a fighter, he needed to resist fighting, and he needed to resist the machines. He needed to resists power that would be offered to him [\u2026]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201c[Lucas] called him Luke Starkiller. I was the first person to kill that idea. I said \u201cyou don\u2019t want Starkiller, you want someone who is a sky dancer, or a sky walker, like the Tibetan tradition of the wind horse, or the Chinese tradition of the sun monkey king who was a sky walker, who could catapult across the sky infinitely fast, faster than the gods.\u201d\u201d<\/p>\n Three Challenges<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cSo, if a fairy tale starts off in a place away from space and time, then there\u2019s a hero. Well the hero always has three challenges. Well the three challenges are really the three aspects of the soul, like Dorothy and the three characters in the Wizard of Oz. Those are parts of herself, and so Luke had three parts to himself, Chewbacca, the kind of lower animal’s instinctual astral body, Han Solo who was the thinker but also a liar, and then you have Obi-Wan Kenobi who was his teacher, the spiritual part of his soul. So there\u2019s three parts to the soul, and those are really challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The three-fold human being, splitting a person into the sprit, the soul and the body, is an essential part of Anthroposophy. But this division goes further and, as Rudolf Steiner said in The Study of Man, \u201cif you want to examine the human being effectively from any point of view you must return again and again to the separation of man\u2019s soul activities into cognition (which takes place in thought), and into feeling and willing.\u201d <\/span>This belief was applied to story Dr. Gabriel and his colleagues were developing.<\/p>\n \u201cHow does Luke meet those challenges in his soul, of thinking, feeling, and willing?\u201d he continued. <\/span>\u201cWell it had to be archetypal. So therefore the plot itself had to have the hero\u2019s challenge between the left and right hand path of evil. […]<\/p>\n \u201cObi-Wan Kenobi dies and becomes a Force ghost. And so as a dead person he speaks to Luke. That\u2019s what the spirit world is: it\u2019s to speak to people across the threshold of death.\u201d<\/p>\n The Master<\/strong><\/p>\n Could Yoda have been influenced by Dr. Gabriel\u2019s suggestions? He wasn\u2019t sure, however,\u00a0\u201cthere was an example that I gave, which I wonder if that didn\u2019t turn into Yoda,\u201d<\/span> he explained. \u201cthe masters always stay hidden, they live alone, they only appear when they need to affect others, and they usually only have one or two students that they train. That\u2019s an archetype that we see in many great spiritual masters, and I wonder if that didn\u2019t affect the development of the character.\u201d This description actually applies to all three masters: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and Emperor Palpatine.<\/p>\n The Antagonists<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr. Gabriel also had a hand in shaping the nemeses.\u00a0\u201cThe character that I insisted on, was that the evil Emperor not be evil at first, that he turn evil, and that we see how he turns evil,\u201d<\/span> he revealed.\u00a0\u201cAnd that Darth Vader not be evil at first, we see how he turns evil. Why? Because that\u2019s teaching everyone the path that you would go if you took the right or left hand path. We need to see that, we need to see the ultimate end of where that goes. And then we see the ultimate end of where Luke goes, which is resolution, and he and Leia save everything, and they go off to la-la land at the end of it, that\u2019s what a fairy tale is supposed to be.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n When it comes to churches of Jedi cropping up, with followers (and others) dressing up, Dr. Gabriel was excited about the idea: \u201cThose archetypes are real\u201d<\/span>,\u00a0he insisted.\u00a0\u201cThey\u2019re in them. And when they put on the suit of Darth Vader, let them act that out. That\u2019s what we do in Waldorf Schools: we put on plays, we do drama all the time. Why? Because once you\u2019ve played the evil role, you don\u2019t need to play it. You\u2019ve seen what that is. Once you\u2019ve played the really good role, you know where you\u2019re going.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n An Elegant Weapon<\/strong><\/p>\n Character development wasn\u2019t the only thing Dr. Gabriel influenced. He also inspired the most iconic weapon of the Star Wars saga, the lightsaber. His reaction to reading that Jedi warriors carried guns was extreme:\u00a0\u201cno, no, no, no, no, no,\u201d<\/span>\u00a0he exclaimed,\u00a0\u201ca Jedi warrior doesn\u2019t have a gun, he has an aura. That aura takes anything shot at him and turns it equally back to the person it came from. [\u2026] \u201cIt\u2019s what the lightsaber was supposed to be. It\u2019s supposed to be connected from the body. I described it as your electric spine and that electric force is the force that you have to develop, which then was turned into the midi-chlorine references, which in fact had to do with the Force. The Force is directly connected, according to Lucas, to midi-chlorian in your blood. This is the concept found in Rudolf Steiner\u2019s Anthroposophy called the Etherisation of the Blood which I said should be the main focus of how people attain becoming a Jedi warrior, which is to actually understand how to retain your breath through certain exercises and transmute elements so that then they become light. That\u2019s what the lightsaber\u2019s supposed to be. [\u2026] \u00a0It is a shield that\u2019s always in place, 360, completely around you, so that you cannot be harmed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Midi-Chlorians & the Etherisation of the Blood<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr. Gabriel was very keen to explain that to him, the Force is a reality and that it can be developed by anyone, with practice.\u00a0\u201cAnd what do they get?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0He revealed.\u00a0\u201cThey get what Yoda got: long life, wisdom. What you saw in the first three movies was not a Yoda who was out swinging his lightsaber, he had the Force, he moved things around by the Force, he could change people\u2019s minds, he could affect people\u2019s minds. [\u2026] \u201cIs there such a thing as midi-chlorian? Well, as far as we know, no, but if you ask George Lucas, he says he was talking about prana, or life energy. I would say that you could take it a step further: there\u2019s a substance called ormus that is found in every living thing. But when it\u2019s super concentrated into human, it causes your brainwaves to cohere, and actually, the highest brainwaves, gamma waves, come into play, within seconds after taking this substance. So there are possibly substances that can be found that would link up with this concept\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n The Evil of Machines<\/strong><\/p>\n We explored Steiner\u2019s and Anthroposophists\u2019 view on technology in a previous article<\/a>, and Dr. Gabriel was as clear as all the other Athroposophists on the subject:\u00a0\u201cIt is the question of our age, and robots and what we\u2019ll do with robots has everything to do with moral development. \u201cIf we follow the path of Darth Vader and machines, you see the right hand path of evil that leads to fear, death, destruction, obsession, manipulation of people, all the horrible things [\u2026] \u201cWhat is the Death Star? The Death Star is taking our star and making it mechanical. It\u2019s what happens when the machines take over\u201d. The notion that machines can\u2019t be fully trusted is further exemplified by Luke switching off his targeting computer during his last attack run on the Death Star, relying on the Force, to accomplish his goal, as advised by Kenobi, speaking to him from the spirit world.<\/p>\n This negative view of technology is enshrined in the concept of the two paths of evil which Anthroposophists believe each and every one of us must face:\u00a0\u201ceveryone in today\u2019s world actually has two devils talking to them, one in the left ear, one in the right ear,\u201d<\/span> he explained.\u201cWe have to find the middle path and that\u2019s not easy to do. So, that\u2019s what it\u2019s about. When do you know you\u2019re on the middle path? When literally the Force comes up. [\u2026] \u201cYou may not meet the evil Emperor, you may not meet Darth Vader, but they\u2019re there, around you at all times. Everywhere you go, you\u2019re being pulled away with media, with light, with what we call Lucifer, this being who wants to draw you out, keep you away from living in the Earth and loving other people. Then you have on the other hand, the right hand, the path of Darth Vader which wants to draw you down into control, power, dominance, militarism, violence, evil, fear, all of those things. That’s him. Well, we all have those two things happening in us at all times. [\u2026] \u201cEach and every one of us in today\u2019s age, must face this being that I insisted would be called Ahriman, but […] they called him Darth Vader, which actually is a much better name. \u201cBut there literally is evil in the world, and that evil is coming to us through machines, and we do need to learn what George Lucas has taught us: we have to look through the eyes of these machines and see where they\u2019re going to go. And if we aren\u2019t awake, he\u2019s given us a picture that: cyborg wars, mixing humans and machines does not work. Cloning, it\u2019s an evil. [\u2026] \u201cOur father in the modern age, are machines and robots and electricity and all the things machines do for us,\u201d<\/span>\u00a0he continued.\u00a0\u201cWe must understand our relationship to Darth Vader, and I insisted that he be half-machine half-human, and that he had to go through a path of initiation, […] through the other left-hand path of evil, which is Palpatine, […], who turns Darth Vader to the evil. Because the oldest evil in the world is the left-hand path, and that\u2019s the path that pulls you out of your body, but every time it does, you have to pay for it. So when the evil Emperor uses the lightning from his fingers, what does he do? He grows older all the time. He pays for every bit of it. So what does he have to do? He has to convince others to enter into the machines, become the machines, and become what is called the will power. \u201cSo over here you have thinking divorced of reality, the Emperor, and on the other side, you have will force, divorced of consciousness. So the two are actually working together, but they are working in opposite directions. \u201cLuke stands in the middle. So what we see is, Luke has the challenge. Will he go to being a Sith Lord who can actually have lightning coming out of his fingers, have all this incredible power to hold against your enemies, or will he go towards Darth Vader, the path of the machine, who is also his father?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The ultimate end of our two antagonists was obvious to Dr. Gabriel:\u00a0\u201cThe evil Emperor and Darth Vader must destroy each other. […] They\u2019re giving up Luke to kill each other, because of their obsessiveness, because the left and right path don\u2019t really work together, they work opposite, but at the same time they work off of each other. And so in the end, it\u2019s Luke, the higher self, who then can accept both of them for what they are, not become either one of them, understand their genesis, their development, who they are, what they had to go through, which all of us have to go through, and then resolve.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n At the time of the interview, Dr. Gabriel hadn\u2019t seen the latest instalment of\u00a0the Star Wars saga, The Force Awakens, yet his extrapolation, based on his beliefs, and the archetypes he had helped set up through this think tank, seem\u00a0accurate nonetheless:\u00a0\u201chere\u2019s what I hope happens: that Luke stays resolved as the Prodigal Son returned, and that there\u2019d be a female force come forward because that is the force of today\u2019s age: the way to combat Lucifer and Ahriman, the evil Emperor and Darth Vader, is to follow the path of Sophia, the path of wisdom, the path of the female trinity, the path of the soul becoming purified so that it can then commune with the spirit. That is what I hope these three new movies will point out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Star Wars wasn\u2019t the only motion picture Dr. Gabriel influenced; he hinted at another major series of cinematic adventures:\u00a0\u201cI can say that not long after that, I spoke with Kathleen Kennedy and continued to speak with her for over a year about the movies Indiana Jones. [\u2026]\u00a0It\u2019s actually a more impressive story than this one, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The photos of Marcia Griffin and george Lucas were taken from The Secret History of Star Wars<\/a>. Update [5 April 2016]<\/span>:<\/span> Dr. Gabriel has published his memories<\/a> of his involvement with Steven Spielberg\u2019s Poltergeist and the Indiana Jones franchise.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.steinermentary.com\/SM\/Steinerific-Star_Wars_files\/Marcia%20Griffin%20%26%20Lucas.jpg\")
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\n<\/span><\/p>\nThe Paths of Evil<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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\n<\/span><\/p>\nThe Force Awakens<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/div>\nAdditional Influence<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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