A Curious Conversation About Social Threefolding

In a clearing in a hidden wood, a somewhat conventional man and a strange clover hold a rhyming conversation about many things, but most of all about social renewal and its threefold character (as described by Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf Education). The interchange is by turns amusing and instructive. And several times along the way, mysterious beings appear.

Nature and Background of the Story

A Curious Conversation about Social Threefolding is my account -- from notes and memory -- of a rhyming discourse I was permitted to overhear between a man and a strange bit of clover. I have tried to reproduce here the dialog exactly as I heard it. Frequently during the conversation I heard also a third voice narrating. I have included that narrator’s words as well.

As I’m unable to hire an artist, I have myself produced a few unfortunately very basic drawings of scenes, experiences, and ideas from that day.

Excerpt, page 17:

Then with the dignity
Of a green leafy pygmy
That has fought back uncowed,
In the wind the stem bowed
And continued to speak
To the man now made meek.
But the plant’s phrases grew longer
And its voice a bit stronger...

Edward Udell has an MA in history and an MS in Waldorf Education. His historical writing has recently appeared as part of the Hawthorn Press anthology Free, Equal and Mutual, and his English translation of historian Albert Schmelzer’s doctoral thesis has been published as The Threefolding Movement, 1919. Udell’s Three Riddles Around Lincoln: Race, Emancipation, and Colonization, is available here: https: //www.amazon.com/Three-Riddles-Around-Lincoln-Emancipation/dp/1723538361