Handwork and Handicrafts - Waldorf Research Institute

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the inner ability to compose it. The rainbow ... I feel within me a mood of
prayer: That is how the rainbow begins, in the most intense violet that goes
shimmering out and out into immeasurable distances. The violet goes over
into blue—the restful quiet mood of the soul. That again goes over into
green. When we look up to the green arc of the rainbow, it is as though
our soul were poured out over all the sprouting and blossoming of Nature’s
world. It is as though, in passing from violet and blue into green, we had
come away from the gods to whom we were praying, and now in the green
we are finding ourselves in a world that opens the door to wonder, opens the
door to a sensitive sympathy and antipathy with all that is around us. If you
have really drunk in the green of the rainbow, you are already on the way to
understanding all the beings and things of the world. Then you pass on to
yellow, and in yellow you feel firmly established in yourself, you feel you have
the power to be Man in the midst of Nature—that is, to be something more
than the rest of Nature around you. And when you go over to orange, then
you feel your own warmth, the warmth that you carry within you; and at the
same time you are made sensible of many a shortcoming in your character,
and of good points too. Going on then to red, where the other edge of the
rainbow passes once again into the vast distances of Nature, your soul will
overflow with joy and exultation, with ardent devotion, and with love for all
mankind. 3
These words lead us in quite a magical way to an experience of living color. In the
same lecture we hear how inner moods of soul can be experienced as colors:
You would see that the soul was living in red, in a red that positively shouts at
you. When we look at the color red, we experience it from without. But were
we able to glide right into the jubilant red that we see in that painting there
on the wall, and feel how the painter himself must have felt whilst he was
painting it, then we would see, shining there in the red, the radiantly happy
soul that I described just now. A soul that is imbued more with a feeling of
contentment with what has taken place, will live in a more tranquil red.
A soul that is deep sunk in thought lives in green, experiences
green within. A soul that is wrapt in prayer lives in violet, and a soul that is
brimming over with love experiences a pure and quiet red. A soul that is eaten
up with egotism experiences streaks and splashes of yellow-green. And so on,
and so on. Every possible experience without has its corresponding experience
within.
After giving these indications Steiner described how, out of a mood arising at a
certain moment, the individual characters on the stage can be experienced in color. He
illustrated this by showing how the different personalities represented in Hamerling’s Danton
and Robespierre, a play he had discussed earlier in some detail, should be dressed. “You
should then be seeing there before you on the stage the inner soul experiences of the various
characters. Then too will the decor receive at last its style.” 4