Today we come to the seventh note of the scale, the seventh. In it we find an affinity with the soul gesture of cheerfulness.

The Eurythmy Gesture of Cheerfulness

Look at the little feet, dancing on the earth below like tiny root tips balancing lightly; the raised hands with emphasis in the armpits; and, expressed through the veil, the upward-striving feeling that makes the arms very long, while the garment – and this is important – expands downwards in response.

Opening Exercise: Triangle of Light

I invite you all to join in. Stand with your feet as close together as possible, slide your fingers beneath your feet, and slowly draw an upward-pointing triangle to your left and right. It makes you light, a little unstable, yet in a mysterious way also stable. The wind blows through the crown of the tree, and the tree sways with it and enjoys it.

Take this lightness into your hands and let it slowly, slowly stream into you – into your heart. Let this lightness unfold in the heart, expand there, and then slowly flow downwards within you: into the earth, deep into the earth.

How does your chest feel now? How light have your heels become? Breathe, take a small step, relax.

Prime to Seventh

We have come to know the first six notes of the scale as a step-by-step journey through the segments of our arms – and indirectly also through our legs, which quietly join in.

With the prime we sense the collarbone and the body that carries it. DO-DO

With the second we move from the collarbone into the upper arm: we step out of the house. DO-RE

With the third note, the third, we move from the collarbone into the forearm: we wander through the garden in front of our house. DO-MI

With the fourth we move from the collarbone to the wrist – and from there we look back through the back of the hand. DO-FA

With the fifth we turn the hands and feel it all the way into the collarbone: we step out through the garden gate. DO-SOL

With the sixth we sense and move the space between the fingers. Beginning at the collarbone, we leave the body. DO-LA

And with the seventh we even leave the space between the fingers and move beyond the fingertips, beyond the hands. DO-SI

There is no further to go. We have reached our boundary!

The Seventh Beyond the Fingers

Stroke the palm of the hand as the place of the fifth.

Stroke the space between the fingers – best of all without touching the fingers, and a little beyond them – the sixth.

And now feel the life in front of the fingers: how you long for it and stretch towards it. Your fingers merely respond to it. There is life there – let them try to take hold of it – seventh.

Example: The Cupboard

Imagine that you want to travel, and the suitcase is on top of the cupboard. But the cupboard is so tall that you can hardly reach it. So you go very close to the cupboard, stretch up your arms, and rise onto your toes. But it is still not enough.

Then you use your fingers to help you climb a little higher up the cupboard, so that you can reach over the edge and, from the side behind the edge, nudge the suitcase a little forwards. Just a little more – and ah – suddenly it begins to come towards you.

Then you must very quickly make sure that you really catch it and slowly bring it down. First only as far as your middle, because you are glad to have it, and then you slowly set it down.

The Gesture of the Seventh

The seventh is perhaps the phase of our greatest reality. We are in a state of interest, lightness, and inner connection with what we are striving towards.

Collarbone ➔ beyond the fingers: DO-SI

Make this clear to yourself once again: you are not stretching yourself; rather, what is out there, what you are striving towards, sets you in motion. There is life there. That moves your fingers – and you feel it all the way into your collarbone.

Beyond the fingers ➔ collarbone: DO-SI-SI

And then make the releasing very slow, so that this pearling quality you have just experienced can draw into you.

With eurythmists you see that in the seventh they shake their hands and fingers quite strongly. But this is not a shaking that comes from you; rather, you are so far outside yourself that the shaking comes in. There is something out there that shakes your fingers. The further out we go, the more it also streams in.

Shake strongly, but from outside – that means: stretch yourself more and more and let it come in. DO-SI

The Soul Gesture of Cheerfulness

Corresponding to the seventh is the soul gesture of cheerfulness. Cheerfulness is an inner lightness, an expansiveness that you enjoy and consciously go along with.

Stand up, feel joy, and let your arms rise in that joy. Enjoy the flying. Ah, how beautiful. And then release it again.

Everything is weightless, everything inwardly wide. It lifts you of itself. You feel the wind beneath the armpits: it brushes along your body, carries and caresses the arms upwards. Outside there is light, air. Inwardly you feel delight in your own lightness; you warm yourself through your own being.

The Vowel "I"

Behind every interval there also stands a vowel, a soul quality of sound. With the seventh it is the I. Bring your hands in front of the heart and form the gesture of I: one arm down, the other up. As an inner force of the heart – I – stretching the arm downwards and upwards.

And because in eurythmy the arms only show what is happening inwardly, the real stretching takes place within: from the heart downwards, upwards. I. Release. Let the breath respond. Small step.

With I it is like a plant. It actually grows into the earth, and what it is able to form there as roots first gives it the strength to unfold what is above the earth. So the movement downwards is the primary activity of I.

Bring your hands before your heart and slowly stream downwards with both hands. Feel what you have to do so that this downward streaming straightens your body. I call this the Pater Noster principle: it streams downwards, and as a consequence it also goes upwards.

Transfer this to the I-gesture. Bring your hands before the heart, stream actively downwards with one hand, and try to let the other hand rise through this. Your activity is downwards, and you ‘stretch’ the upper hand through the movement downwards. You go deeper and deeper and deeper – and by doing so you lift and stretch the other arm. Then release mindfully.

Do it with the other hand as well: stream downwards, downwards, downwards, and the other hand rises in counterflow.

You can feel this all the way into the feet: on the balls of the feet it goes downwards, and in return the heels become light. Only then do you make I.

Cheerfulness with Grounding

The figure of cheerfulness also shows this counterflow, only in reverse: you stream upwards in lightness, but at the same time the garment expands downwards towards the earth.

Try it out: you stand, awaken joy within yourself, lightness beneath the armpits. The wind carries the arms upwards, it lifts you. And at the same time you sense your connection to the earth. And as in the seventh, your feet have become so fine that they feel more of the spiritual than the material aspect of the earth.

Make the I-gesture: «I»

Make the gesture of cheerfulness in such a way that inwardly you are also looking downwards and becoming conscious of this looking down.

The Dissolving Seventh

To conclude, let us return once more to the seventh. The seventh is in fact the highest note of the scale. After it comes what we already know: the first note, the prime.

So the seventh is also something like a first completion of our journey.

That is why Rudolf Steiner gives the suggestion that if one wishes to approach what is most spiritual in the cosmos, one should let the seventh ‘dissolve away’ (➔ The Musical Hallelujah). Let us try that: DO-SI

Now we are no longer stretching only towards a suitcase; rather, the suitcase is everywhere, all around us. And so it becomes very quiet, and quieter and quieter: DO-SI-...

This dissolving away is carried by inner cheerfulness and groundedness and, in its true nature, becomes a receiving.

And when you then let go and slowly return to the heart, you can let the wakeful state of ‘dissolving into the cosmos’ with the seventh resound within your heart: DO-SI-...

Slowly let go, breathe, and sit down quietly to listen inwardly.