News from Southern Africa

[EMMERENTIA CLOETE]

Hullo Everyone. Greetings from Cape Town!
There's a bunch of us here in the southern tip of Africa just got 
taught how to cob by Jan Stuurman who came out and ran some courses. 
We've formed a natural builder's colloqium and have started a 
newsletter. We'll be swopping skills and labour and such too. 
I'm raving about cob and have read through all your mail to date, but 
hadn't much to contribute until now.
The Suskin's have got their plans for a strawbale house past code and 
are getting geared to start. I'm selling my heavily bonded suburban 
house so's I can  start again with a cob house. It's in the hands 
of the gods and goddesses right now as to when this one sells and I 
can get going on the new one. But meanwhile I'm exploring all the 
peripheral stuff like where to get my clay and my scavenged car 
windows etc. Keith Struthers has been quietly building cob for about 
three years now and has the code all sorted out already!
 I live pretty close to a squatter camp and all these 
beautiful natural people from the rural areas are coming in and living 
in plastic baghouses and losing their connection with the earth and 
wanting mercedes Benzes and swimming pools. I'm looking forward to 
what can grow out of  building a "mudhouse" in the middle of suburbia!
Also, I'm doing the foundaton year at the Steiner college part-time
and in our first module which was on the threefold aspect of 
man, of course I chose Architecture as the theme for my project. Completely 
blew my mind, and I figured it might be interesting to some of you. 
Including the final paragraph here but could zap out the entire thing 
to any who are interested.
NATURAL BUILDING
>From Bayes, page 25: "...he (Steiner) tells us that when we use the the earth,
the seas, the forests and so on for raw materials,we not only upset an 
ecological balance but also cast out elemental beings or nature spirits who 
live there. But then when we use these materials in technology we produce 
something which becomes the abode, not of the displaced nature spirits,
but of Ahrimanic beings.
Every new building deprives a plot of earth of the healing forces of sun,
wind, rain, plant and animal life. The building must redeem this by its own 
qualities. Steiner adds another aspect to this by saying that when man 
gazes at nature the perceptive quality of his life of soul deteriorates, 
but that the introduction of true architecture into the landscape can 
rescue the soul from this situation, can provide a remedial and 
therapeutic focus."
When one builds with your own hands, you are actually pouring your 
life forces into the building and building an etheric building at the 
same time. You are `enlivening' the materials - like potentising medicine. 
At night when we sleep, the astral body gets drained by the Ahrimanic 
energies in the building materials produced by technology, but in this way 
these forces are counteracted.
Finally, in the last chapter, Steiner says " .... it is not at all unnatural 
that in a building which belongs to the present and future, we should set 
out in full consciousness to create forms which will help man to conquer 
the consciousness of merely physical and material actuality and feel 
himself expanded out into the cosmos through the architecture, sculpture 
and all that this work of art may contain." 
That's it! Will talk to you again. Good luck with all your buildings.
Regards, Rencia.