כל הנשמה תהלל יה הללויה תהילים ק"נ

The word Halleluya is constructed of two words put together meaning “Praise God”, or as Rudolf Steiner indicated: “I purify myself from everything which hinders me from beholding the Highest”. The way Rudolf Steiner “translated” these words from Hebrew, far beyond their literal meaning, suggests we see the word Halleluya as a purifying mantric word, who’s deep meaning can be experienced amplified through Eurythmy. In the distant past, people would baptize in water to purify themselves, upon entering the Temple, before a ceremony of sacrifice or before prayer. The religious Jews still perform this practice to this day. The purification through Halleluya as done in Eurythmy, is a new process. It is a baptism in the fire element of the word. As in the words of St. John, Matthew 3:11;“I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance but He that cometh after me is mightier than I.. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. The word-mantra “Halleluya” is a purifying baptism within the living spirit of the “I”, within fire.

There are two thresholds wherein the unified whole of the “I am” may be experienced. One is in the infinitely small which is revealed in the inner individual pole of our being, and the other in the infinitely grand and wide - revealed as the universal peripheral pole of our being. And in between the two poles of the breath, lives and moves as a pendulum, the human being.

Halleluyah begins and ends with the sound “H”, the sound of the life-sparking breath. The first “H” is like the first breath of life, in which the lungs open and the stream of life permeates with an inhale of air. Those who have been fortunate to see a baby being born and taking its first breath, have experienced how spirit life enters through the breath into the blueish body, how the fire of life sparkles, making the baby alive, warm – a human beginning his course of life on earth within breath’s rhythmic stream of time. The first breath comes from the eternal peripheral infinite pole of the “I am”. The closing “H” of the Halleluyah is like the last breath of life – as the air exhales for the last time, man finishes his earthly life and returns the divine breath entrusted to him back to the creator. To witness the last breath is also an exalted privilege, and those who have witnessed it could have seen this crossing through the “eye of the needle”, through the infinitely small inner center which enables a birth into the eternal and liberation to the infinite. In the Halleluya, between the two “H” poles, between inhaling and exhaling, one can experience an archetypal process of birth, death, and in between, the whole of life spread, life of movement in time. This archetypal process occurs, in every Eurythmy lesson, in every encounter.

After the opening of the gate to life that occurs in the first “H” and the igniting of earthly life – one can also say igniting the activity of the process – the soul is filled with the wonder and awe of the “A”. This power of awe the “A” holds enables, as Rudolf Steiner said in regard with curative Eurythmy, to overcome the animalistic-earthly within us. Preceding the closing “H”, as a mirrored image an “A” appears, but this is an entirely different “A”, as it implies the future quality of love that man will one day be capable of. The first “A” has an opening, leading quality, full of awe to the unfolding life connections. This quality elevates man above the animalistic and enables him to overcome it. Therefore, it holds an autumnal-Michealic quality. The last “A”, however, has a healing, compassionate quality, which can only arise in our being through the resurrection of the spring; this is a Raphaelic quality. 

After the first “A” we enter a process, a journey of seven pulses, a process saturated with seven yearning questions about the spirit, through the lively and transformative activity of the sound “L”. Seven times from the smallest to the largest, seven steps climbing an intensifying path going upward, and which can be described as springing forth from our inner, personal, subjective pole of our being. With the last “L”, after the seven notes of the scale have been played, we are left in the experience of the Septime. Seven efforts, seven steps, seven destiny questions have been laid on the threshold. After giving all away, there is nothing left that we can do. It is now in the hands of the spirit. We are waiting on the threshold from the earthly side of existence, we have laid our destinies at the foot of the eternal, out of our personal fate which is always permeated by crises and pain.

This is the experience leading to the majestic “E”, which holds the middle point between the first birth giving Halleluyah breath and the last breath of death. The “E” stands between them, as the moment of death within life itself, an echo of the Golgotha moment that every human being experience in his own life. A turning point, like the silence-mute interval, wherein the new is ripening, the new speech to the spirit. We linger at the crossing through the personal turning point threshold, waiting for the blessed redemption of the Octave. It arrives as an answer in the form of three times “L”, which in no way resemble the former seven urgent and yearning “L”s. These three “L” s come from a different standpoint – that of the Octave, our higher self. They are large, wide and calm  lovingly and with no judgment they wreathe the sinning, suffering part of us, which longs for purification. This is an incredibly deep and comforting answer to the questions laid at the threshold, coming from the higher part of our being, which fills us with faith and gratitude for the Spirit’s wise and loving guidance. This answer which leads us to the “U”, allows us to sense that we are created in the image of God. This is the most divine human form, which has been sacrificed for man and given to him as a seed in ancient Saturn. When the human archetypal form has been penetrated with the power of the “I am”, the sound “I” rings into it and fills it with uniqueness, with an individuality that stands between the two counter-forces, Lucifer and Ahriman, and through its spirit-aimed selfness– redeems them. When this selfness gives itself in service to the world’s development, it fills its one and deepest purpose – pure love that springs from the freed man and streams to the world through the “A”. When this love is given over, all that is left is to quietly end the process with our last “H” breath, to end the baptism in the purifying word.

When we think of the possibility that Eurythmy holds – to bring us closer to the experience of the other human being, through the listening the Eurythmic space requires, it immediately becomes clear that the Halleluya holds a special opportunity to be active towards the far future, when man will no longer be selfish. We know through R. Steiner indications that we can only find our higher self in the other. We can unite the center of our hearts with the heart of another person and carry him inside us through the process of the Halleluya. We can also unite our heart’s center with the heart of the Earth and so take the whole Earth into this process of healing and purification. This very action creates reverence for the deep guidance of destiny which we can become partners in carrying. The Reverence gesture enfolds this journey of purification in “Halleluya”, which brings us closer to the Highest of all and removes the obstacles from the path to Him. “Halleluya” enables us to be directly active in healing the destiny of Man and Earth.