The Anthroposophical Soul Calendar and the Incarnation Cycle of Man E-Book

Roland Schrapp

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 1050

Beschreibung

This book takes a completely new look at the Anthroposophical Soul Calendar. It is abaout the deeper meaning of the fifty-two weekly verses, which has remained essentially unexplored in the last hundred years since the first edition by Rudolf Steiner. A dense veil of Isis was spread over them, of which is well known that no mortal person can lift it. Only the immortal, psycho-spiritual human being, who knows himself at home in the extrasensory, higher worlds, is capable of doing this. Only to him the weekly verses reveal themselves as a travel guide through these worlds and lift him up to ever higher spiritual-cosmic realms until he reaches the experience of God, from where he gradually descends again into a new life on Earth, enriched in spirit and fertilized in his soul. If the reader embarks on this journey, the spiritual archetype of the Soul Calendar is ultimately unveiled to him and he achieves an extended understanding of Man and Christ. By many quotations from Rudolf Steiner's lectures and books, the author virtually lets Steiners himself elucidate the breathtaking depths of his mysterious weekly verses.

Leseprobe

In reality the human being is not an earth-being. In reality the human being is a cosmic being, a being belonging to the whole universe.

Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of 31 October 1920, GA 200

Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe.

Rudolf Steiner, beginning oft he first Leading Thought, GA 26

But now comes the time when the view of the human being as a spiritual being that undergoes a development between death and a new birth, becomes a living feeling, a living sensation, where one must live in the imagination of the supernatural meaning of human souls. For without this imagination the culture of the earth will be killed.

Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of 6 February 1920, GA 196

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

RUDOLF STEINER’S PREFACES TO THE SOUL CALENDAR

WEEKLY VERSES OF THE SUMMER HALF-YEAR

Experiences of the Soul in Spring – Ascension to the higher worlds

Spring in Life on Earth – 1st Week

Ascension to the Moon Sphere – 2nd Week

Ascension to the Mercury Sphere – 3rd Week

Ascension to the Venus Sphere – 4th Week

Ascension to the Sun Sphere – 5th Week

Ascension to the Mars Sphere – 6th Week

Ascension to the Spheres of Jupiter and Saturn – 7th Week

Ascension to the Sphere of the Zodiac – 8th Week

Ascension to the Sphere of the Spirit Self – 9th Week

Ascension to the Sphere of the Germ Sheath of the Life Spirit – 10th Week

Ascension to the Sphere of the Germ Sheath of the Spirit Man – 11th Week

Ascension to the First Sphere of the World of the Life Spirit – 12th Week

Arrival in the Second Sphere of the World of the Life Spirit – 13th Week

The Christ Being

Experiences of the Soul in Summer – Return to Life on Earth

Turn Back in the Second Sphere of the World of the Life Spirit – 14th Week

Return to the First Sphere of the World of the Life Spirit – 15th Week

Return to the Sphere of the Germ Sheath of the Spirit Man – 16th Week

Return to the Sphere of the Germ Sheath of the Life Spirit – 17th Week

Return to the Sphere of the Spirit Self – 18th Week

Return to the Sphere of the Zodiac – 19th Week

Relationships between the Weekly Verses

Return to the Spheres of Saturn and Jupiter – 20th Week

Return to the Mars Sphere – 21st Week

Return to the Sun Sphere – 22nd Week

Return to the Venus Sphere – 23rd Week

Return to the Mercury Sphere – 24th Week

Return to the Moon Sphere – 25th Week

Autumn in Life on Earth – 26th Week

WEEKLY VERSES OF THE WINTER HALF-YEAR

Experiences of the Soul in Autumn – Ascension to the higher worlds

Autumn in Life on Earth – 27th Week

Ascension to the Moon Sphere – 28th Week

Ascension to the Mercury Sphere – 29th Week

Ascension to the Venus Sphere – 30th Week

Ascension to the Sun Sphere – 31sth Week

Ascension to the Mars Sphere – 32nd Week

Ascension to the Spheres of Jupiter and Saturn – 33rd Week

Ascension to the Sphere of the Zodiac – 34th Week

Ascension to the Sphere of the Spirit Self – 35th Week

Ascension to the Sphere of the Germ Sheath of the Life Spirit – 36th Week

Ascension to the Sphere of the Germ Sheath of the Spirit Man – 37th Week

Ascension to the First Sphere of the World of the Life Spirit – 38th Week

Arrival in the Second Sphere of the World of the Life Spirit – 39th Week

Christ and the Human Being

Experiences of the Soul in Winter – Return to Life on Earth

Turn Back in the Second Sphere of the World of the Life Spirit – 40th Week

Return to the First Sphere of the World of the Life Spirit – 41st Week

Reflections of the Human Incarnation Cycle in the Annual Rhythm of Nature

Return to the Sphere of the Germ Sheath of the Spirit Man – 42nd Week

Return to the Sphere of the Germ Sheath of the Life Spirit – 43rd Week

Return to the Sphere of the Spirit Self – 44th Week

Return to the Sphere of the Zodiac – 45th Week

Return to the Spheres of Saturn and Jupiter– 46th Week

Return to the Mars Sphere – 47th Week

Return to the Sun Sphere – 48th Week

Return to the Venus Sphere – 49th Week

Return to the Mercury Sphere – 50th Week

Return to the Moon Sphere – 51st Week

Spring in Life on Earth – 52nd Week

Christ and the Course of the Year

Christ of the West and the East

The Year 1912 and the Date of the Mystery of Golgotha

OVERVIEW OF THE WEEKLY VERSES

LIST OF FIGURES

Introduction

In today’s materialistically oriented time, many people are filled with the sobering idea of living on planet Earth as an insignificant “speck of dust” on the edge of a galaxy, among myriads of other celestial bodies in a cosmos which is infinite but predominantly hostile to life. The modern, enlightened person feels his own body no longer only as the material basis, but rather as the cause of his consciousness and of his inner soul experiences, of which he can be robbed of at any time because of the body’s mortality. Only the constant suppression of the certainty of death makes the supposed temporal limit of existence bearable for many. Since the blossoming of materialistically oriented natural science in the 19th century, the human being can not find any support that grants him inner security, neither in the large, wide world nor in his own being. For many people, this transition of their conception from an existence that was spirit-saturated and god-supported, in which man knew he was safe, to a spiritless, godforsaken existence is combined with a feeling of insecurity and dissatisfaction of the soul. Even if it may be not fully aware of it, it still exists. Rudolf Steiner often pointed out the importance of the great change of human consciousness in the course of the 19th century and the resulting consequences for the beginning of the 20th century. Even countless people of the 21st century suffer from this, not less, but rather more.

As long as a person clings with his soul only to his transient body, he submits himself to transience and the idea of imminent destruction. Only when he understands that not only a soul but also an immortal spirit dwells, lives and works in the human body, who is related to the Spiritual working in the cosmos, the All-Spirit, only then can today's human soul again find a proof support that gives security and inner stability. This is the great task of Anthroposophy, the wisdom of the inner being, the spiritual essence of man. Rudolf Steiner summarized this in the meaningful words of his first leading thought:

“Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge that wants to lead the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe. It emerges in people as a need of heart and feeling. It must find its justification in being able to satisfy this need.”1

However, not only with his spirit, but also with his soul, man is rooted in the nature around him, both terrestrial and extraterrestrial. Therefore, through sympathy of the soul with nature’s annual cycle, he can follow a path of self-knowledge by feeling. Rudolf Steiner writes about this in his preface to the first edition of the Soul Calendar in the year 1912:

“In this way, the year becomes the archetype of human soul activity and thus a fruitful source of true self-recognition. In the following Soul-Year-Calendar, the human spirit is thought of in such a position in which he can sense his own soul-weaving on the seasonal moods from week to week in the image on the impressions of the course of the year. It is meant as a self-recognition through feeling. This feeling self-recognition can experience the cycle of the soul-life as a timeless one on the time by the given characteristic weekly sentences. Expressly, it is meant to be a possibility of a path of self-recognition.”

“Timeless” is the cycle of human soul-life in so far as it is connected with the immortal, eternal spirit of man, which is not subject to the limitations of the Temporal. Consequently, the Soul Calendar ultimately leads to the knowledge of the spirit and thus overall to a deeper knowledge of the psycho-spiritual being of man in general. An extraordinarily deep meaning lies hidden behind the often mysterious formulations of the weekly verses, which has not yet been revealed in the last hundred years since the publication of the Anthroposophical Soul Calendar by Rudolf Steiner. A thick veil is spread over it, a veil of Isis, the goddess of the soul, of which it is known that no mortal can lift it. Only the immortal, psycho-spiritual human being, who knows himself at home in the extrasensory, higher worlds, is capable of doing this. Only to him the weekly verses unveil themselves as a travel guide through these worlds and lift him up into ever higher spiritual-cosmic realms until he experiences God, from where he gradually descends again into a new life on Earth, enriched in spirit and fertilised in his soul. If the reader embarks on this journey, the spiritual archetype of the Soul Calendar underlying the weekly verses is ultimately revealed to him. In addition, a much broader understanding of the human being opens up to the reader. And since the psycho-spiritual human being as the “Son of Man” is intimately connected with Christ, the “Son of God”, a deeper understanding of the human being can only be truly attained if it is accompanied by a deeper understanding of the Christ Being.

Looking behind the veil of Isis, is only possible, if one rises into a meditative mood. Rudolf Steiner wrote in his first preface at the turn of the year 1912: “It would be easy to say: So, as stated here, the soul should meditate if it wants to cultivate a bit of self-knowledge. It is not said, because man’s own path is to take inspiration from something given, not to submit pedantically to a «path of knowledge».” However, this does not mean that the weekly verses are no meditation formula. It simply means that it should be put into every person’s free will how he or she deals with the verses and whether at all. Perhaps a person prefers verses of a completely different kind for meditation on his or her individual path of development. On the other hand, even people who have not yet found access to meditation can certainly find their very own way of dealing with the weekly verses. – But, insights that were granted a human soul, who did not meditate on the weekly verses in the narrower sense, but let them work inwardly in a meditative mood for several years and traced the spiritual depths hidden therein, his insights into the terrestrial nature and the extraterrestrial cosmos, especially into the psycho-spiritual being of man, which far surpasses all limits of the Temporal, and in addition into the relation between man and the Christ Being, is the subject of this book. Moreover, numerous quotations from Rudolf Steiner’s lectures and books uncover the enormous depths of his weekly verses.

The greatest gain in knowledge will come to the reader when the individual chapters are read in sequence beginning with the Easter verse as the first, since they build on one another in content and there are many references to previous chapters. This is the only useful manner to follow the gradual development of the flow of reflections and to fully comprehend their content. Since Easter is a movable celebration, the exact date for the Easter verse will vary from year to year, as well as for the weekly verses of the first half of the year preceding and following the Easter verse. However, this should not give rise to pedantic mathematical calculations, since usually several weekly verses are carried by similar moods of soul and nature and there are many content-related connections, which will have to be dealt with in more detail in the course of the reflections.

Rudolf Steiner himself also provided us with information in this regard. According to Johanna Mücke2, the questions about shifting of the date appeared as early as 1913. She wrote in a letter: “At that time I asked Doctor about it and he said: the main thing is that the first stanza always begins at Easter. The shift would not mean much, as he always kept three stanzas of the weekly verses in the same mood.” (Johanna Mücke’s letter of 12 April 1938 to Marie Steiner) In connection with eurythmic work in later years, he also explained to Marie Steiner: “The verses are designed internally in such a way that three verses each follow a basic mood, then in turn three comprise the next mood.” (Marie Steiner, in a letter to Hans Arenson, dated July 15, 1948) 3

Regarding the other question of how to handle the weekly verses by people living in the southern hemisphere of the Earth, the following statement by Rudolf Steiner from one of his lectures may be referred to:

“Now the human soul feels also: When in the north the soul of the Earth moves out to the stars [i.e. at St. John’s Day] and to a certain extent appears to the spiritual view like a comet tail which extends out to heaven, on the other side the soul of the Earth withdraws into the Earth, and it is Christmas. And again vice versa, when the soul of the Earth withdraws here, on the other side the comet’s tail extends out into the cosmos. That happens at the same time.”4

From such sympathy of the human soul with the annual rhythm of nature we may conclude that at the same time, when the readers of the northern hemisphere devote themselves to the 12th weekly verse, the “John-Atmosphere”, for the people of the southern hemisphere the 38th weekly or Christmas verse, the “Consecration-Night-Atmosphere”, is the appropriate one.

Now the reader is cordially invited to enter into the soul- and spirit-depths of the hitherto unexplored fifty-two weekly verses with the help of the following reflections, so that the spiritual archetype of the Soul Calendar may gradually reveal itself to him and he may achieve an expanded view of the human being as well as his connection with the cosmos and the Christ Being. – An overview of the fifty-two weekly verses is added at the end of the book.

Finally, the author would like to thank Benjamin Schmidt (Germany), a friend in mind, who accompanied the development of this work from Christmas 2016 to Easter 2018 as a first reader and, through his feedback, occasionally gave the author the opportunity to explain one or the other difficult feature in more detail. It turned out that the translation of the text into English was completed just at Easter-time 2020, with the friendly support of Dr. Gopi Krishna Vijaya (Utah, USA) in proofreading the author’s English translation.

Note on the translation of the weekly verses:

Due to the great importance of every single word of the fifty-two weekly verses, the translated stanzas were placed side by side with the original German wording. In this way, readers with knowledge of German may always compare the translations with Rudolf Steiner’s original words. Since in many cases he created new combinations of German words in order to express the deeper meaning of the verses in an appropriate way, corresponding new word-combinations had to be created in English as well.

Rudolf Steiner chose his words not only according to their meaning, but also according to their sound based on their consonants and vowels. Of course, this could often not be maintained in English. Basically, wherever possible, translations more literal and similar to the German original sound were preferred to the more common ones. For example, the first line of the first weekly verse or Easter verse “Wenn aus den Weltenweiten” was translated “When from the vastness of the world” in order to retain its sound character. The consonants “W” and “V” are the consonants of the zodiacal sign Aries as Rudolf Steiner told us in his lectures on eurythmy5, and they resound three times in this line. This could be maintained. For the same reason German terms like “Weltenwort”, “Weltenselbst” and “Weltenwärme” were not translated using the more common terms Cosmic Word, Cosmic Self and cosmic warmth or cosmic heat, but “World Word”, “World Self” and “world-warmth”. Priority was given to fidelity with regard to the meaning or the original sound over a possibly smoother linguistic or poetic sound.

We must accept, that the original German verses often sound strange and unusual even to German readers. Therefore it would have been a wrong strategy for translation to look always for words sounding more familiar to the English ear than the chosen ones.

Kassel, Easter-time 2020

Roland Schrapp 6

1 GA 26 “Anthroposophische Leitsätze” (Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts)

2 Johanna Mücke was the director of the Philosophisch-Theosophischer Verlag (Philosophical-Theosophical Publisher) founded by Marie von Sivers (from 1914 Marie Steiner) in 1908, which was renamed the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag (Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publisher) after the separation from the Theosophical Society.

3 “Beiträge zur Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe” (Contributions to the Rudolf Steiner Complete Edition), Nr. 37/38

4 GA 226 “Menschenwesen, Menschenschicksal und Welt-Entwicklung” (Man’s being, his destiny and world-evolution), Kristiania (Oslo), Lecture of 21 May 1923

5 GA 279 “Eurythmie als sichtbare Sprache” (Eurythmy as a visible language), Dornach, Lecture of 8 July 1924

6 spoken: Shrupp

Rudolf Steiner’s Prefaces to the Soul Calendar

Preface to the first edition 1912/13

The human being feels connected to the world and its change of times. He feels his own being as a likeness of the world-archetype. But the likeness is not a symbolic-pedantic imitation of the archetype. What the great world reveals in the course of time corresponds to a pendulum beating of the human being, which does not run in the element of time. In fact, man can feel his being, insofar as it is devoted to the senses and their perceptions, as corresponding to the summer nature interwoven with light and warmth. The foundation in himself and the life in his own world of thoughts and will impulses he can sense as a winter existence. Thus, in him, the rhythm of outer and inner life becomes what nature presents in temporal alternation as summer and winter. But great secrets of existence may be revealed to him if he relates his timeless rhythm of perception and thought in a corresponding manner to the time-rhythm of nature. In this way, the year becomes the archetype of human soul activity and thus a fruitful source of true self-recognition. In the following Soul-Year-Calendar, the human spirit is thought of in such a position in which he can sense his own soul-weaving on the seasonal moods from week to week in the image on the impressions of the course of the year. It is meant as a self-recognition through feeling. This feeling self-recognition can experience the cycle of the soul-life as a timeless one on the time by the given characteristic weekly sentences. Expressly, it is meant to be a possibility of a path of self-recognition. It is not intended to give «prescriptions» in the manner of theosophical pedants, but rather is pointed to the vivid weaving of the soul as it can be. Everything that is destined for souls takes an individual colouring. For this very reason, however, every soul will find its way in relation to an individually marked one. It would be easy to say: So, as stated here, the soul should meditate if it wants to cultivate a bit of self-knowledge. It is not said, because man’s own path is to take inspiration from something given, not to submit pedantically to a «path of knowledge».

Preface to the second edition 1918

The course of the year has its own life. The human soul can sense this life. If the soul allows itself to be effected by what speaks variously out of the life of the year from week to week, only then will it really find itself through such participation. It will feel how forces will be growing up by that, which strengthen it from within. It will notice that these forces want to be awakened in it by the share the soul can take in the meaning of the course of the world as it takes place in the sequence of times. Only by that it will become aware of the fine but meaningful threads of connection, which exist between itself and the world into which it was born.

For each week, in this calendar a verse of such kind is inscribed, which inspires the soul to witness what is going on in this week as a part of the entire life of a year. What this life causes to resound in the soul, when the soul unites with it, is intended to be expressed in the verse. It is thought of a healthy «feeling at one» with the course of nature and a powerful «finding oneself» arising from it, in the belief that sympathizing with the world’s course in the sense of such verses is something the soul yearns for, if it rightly understands itself.7

7 Both prefaces as well as all weekly verses of the Anthroposophical Soul Calendar are taken from volume GA 40 “Wahrspruchworte” (True-Verse-Words / Truth-Wrought-Words)

Weekly Verses of the Summer Half-Year

SUMMER HALF-YEAR

Experiences of the Soul in Spring – Ascension to the higher worlds

Spring in Life on Earth – 1st Week

1 Easter-Atmosphere (7 – 13 April)

1 Oster-Stimmung (7. – 13. April)

When from the vastness of the world

Wenn aus den Weltenweiten

The sun speaks to the human sense

Die Sonne spricht zum Menschensinn

And pleasure from the depths of soul

Und Freude aus den Seelentiefen

Unites with light, in looking,

Dem Licht sich eint im Schauen,

Then soar, out of the selfhood’s sheath,

Dann ziehen aus der Selbstheit Hülle

Thoughts to the distant space

Gedanken in die Raumesfernen

And dully bind man’s essence

Und binden dumpf

To the existence of the spirit.

Des Menschen Wesen an des Geistes Sein.

In the first weekly verse, entitled “Easter-Atmosphere” by Rudolf Steiner, the special kind of the people’s experience during their life on Earth is characterized in carefully selected words full of wisdom. As soon as we “see the light of the world” through physical birth, we come under the direct influence of sensations that touch us every day from the outside. They first speak to our sensory organs and attract the attention of our soul to the outside. Particularly intensively we notice this at the beginning of spring, when the days become longer than the nights, due to the fact that the Sun rises higher and the light prevails over the darkness. Then life in nature also celebrates its resurrection and, through its increasing sprouting, growing and blooming, brings us the astonishing variety of forms and colours of the plant world, which emerges anew each year. But within the animal world as well, the new life, initially born protected by the forest or the stable, is striving more and more out of its hiding places and ventures to the outside world, which is so tempting with its sensory stimuli. It is impressions of this kind that we humans love most about spring. They also lure us out into nature. We feel refreshed and enlivened by the miracle that sprouts every year and which now takes place all around us on the surface of the Earth.

Strangely, in the first weekly verse of his Soul Calendar, Rudolf Steiner mentions nothing of these numerous births of new bodily life in the nature around us, although this verse is nevertheless titled “Easter-Atmosphere” and we associate with Easter time just the annual resurrection of new life on Earth. Completely contrary to our expectations, Rudolf Steiner draws our attention away from the Earth’s surface and the earthly nature with his very first words, up into the atmosphere that surrounds the Earth filled with “light”, and even further out into the “vastness of the world” and the “distant space”, that is, into the area of the extraterrestrial. If one lets the words of the first weekly verse have an impartial effect on oneself, a feeling of astonishment may arise at first and raise the question in one’s soul: Why does Rudolf Steiner so completely ignore the extremely impressive and wonderful, even enchanting spring events on Earth? Why, in this time of the births of the bodies, does he direct our gaze so consistently away from the Earth, out into the vastness?

On closer inspection, we notice in addition that only one single thing of the entire terrestrial nature is mentioned at all. It is the bodily sheath of the human being. But even this is briefly and concisely described simply as a “sheath” of something that Rudolf Steiner calls “selfhood”. He obviously wants to draw our attention to a process of consciousness that is taking place on this sheath of man, namely on its outside, especially in its sense of sight, the main sense of the human being. As such, sight is particularly emphasized with the term “human sense”, although it certainly also stands for all other senses of the human being. The reason for the special emphasis of the sense of sight is certainly that with it we perceive the “light” surrounding the Earth and, following this, are able to penetrate farthest into “the vastness of the world” and the “distant space”, much further than the sense of hearing would allow us, not to mention the senses of touch, smell and taste that give information only about the immediate surroundings of the body and the body itself. As a consequence of the effect of the sunlight on the “human sense” something is triggered in the human soul. As a response of our inner world, a compassionate feeling of joy rises “from the depths of soul” towards the sensory impressions approaching us from the outside. In the course of this process of looking at the outside world, man awakens to a first timid consciousness of his “selfhood”. He becomes aware of something that is to a certain extent independent in relation to the outside world, his self, which he calls “I”. In a lecture from Volume 5 about karmic connections, Rudolf Steiner points out in short, concise words: “that we stand here on Earth as human beings, enclosed in our skin, so to speak in terms of space. Everything within our skin we call ourselves. Everything that is outside our skin, we call the world. And we look out into the world from what is within our skin.”8

Right at the beginning of the weekly verses of the Soul Calendar, man is thus described not as a merely physical, living body-being, but in particular as a consciousness-being that even awakens to the realization of “selfhood”, to the consciousness of his “I”, on the basis of a trinity consisting of body (“the selfhood’s sheath”), soul (“joy from the depths of soul”) and spirit (“thoughts”). In this threefold composition man was born in the course of a long evolutionary process out of the whole Divine, which surrounds us as nature. The Rosicrucians of the Middle Ages summarized their knowledge of this process of the development of the human members of being in the words “Ex deo nascimur” – “Out of God we are born, we emerge” – and hid their knowledge in the letter sequence “E D N”. With the Easter season, in which the birth of new bodily life reaches its climax in nature, this “Ex deo nascimur” finds its sensory perceptible likeness in the course of the year and its fulfillment. Although the creative activity of building new bodies will continue in the following months of spring, it will then decrease more and more and eventually fade away in the course of the summer months.

However, when God gives birth to something, it is of His nature and essence. The actual human being developing in and on his lower sheaths is indeed of divine nature, as we know through Christ himself. In John 10:34, the Gospel tells us how Christ pointed this fact out to the Jewish scribes, saying, “Is it not written in your law, «I have said, you are gods?»” Here Christ referred to Psalm 82, verse 6, which the scribes knew and which reminds men of their divine origin: “I said: «You are all gods and sons of the Most High.»” But if we are sons of the Most High, we are sons of the Father. What kind, however, is our father of whose kind we are? Rudolf Steiner commented on notes from a private lesson as follows:

“The first force, the unmanifested Deity, is also called the Father; the second force is the Son, who is both life and creative substance, and the third force is the Spirit. Together they appear as these three primal forces, that is, as Father, Son and [Holy] Spirit, as consciousness, life and form.”9

On another occasion, when Rudolf Steiner spoke about the three kinds of creation, he elucidated about the threefold deity:

“But wherever we have an emerging out of nowhere, there we have the first Logos. Therefore, the first Logos is often called the one, who hidden in the things themselves, the second Logos the substance that rests in the things, which creates the living from the living, the third Logos the one, who combines all that exists, who puts the world together with the things. These three Logoi always interpenetrate mutually in the world. The first Logos also includes inner wisdom and will. The creative activity of the first Logos includes experience, that is, collecting thoughts out of nothing and then again creating according to the thoughts out of nothing. However, creation out of nothing is not meant as if nothing had been there, but that experiences are made in the course of development and that in the course of becoming there is created something new, so that what is there melts down, so to speak, and something new is created from experience.”10

These two statements of Rudolf Steiner can be summarized in the words: The Father is highest divine, creative consciousness. He is hidden within himself. He does not need an outside world to be aware of himself. His life-creating activity is the Son born out of the primordial unity, the only begotten Son. The Spirit shows itself as forms or materials of the most diverse levels of density and in the most diverse combinations. The Son has a direct share in the Father’s consciousness and is creative himself. The purpose of every revelation of the Father is to develop new consciousness in the manifested form up to the highest creative level of consciousness, where it can reunite with its origin, but then enriched with all the new experiences that have been made on the path of development. “So in the end there is something that was not there at the beginning: all the experiences. What was there at the beginning flowed out in all sorts of things and beings. A new consciousness has been created in the end with a new content, a new content of consciousness.”

To accomplish this great work of Creation, the Son sacrifices himself and descends to the densest states of form, pervades them, enlivens and ensouls them. Thereby on the one hand, He gradually makes the divine sparks inherent in them suitable to develop an ever stronger and more comprehensive creative power as well as, on the other hand, an ever stronger and more comprehensive power of consciousness. That is why He says of Himself: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” (John 14:6) He is the way to the Father.

In ancient times of evolution of the human consciousness we already passed through three lower levels of consciousness, the dull trance consciousness, the deep sleep consciousness and the dream consciousness. In a further evolutionary step on Earth, we developed up to an outer object consciousness, which enables us to gain the knowledge of ourselves on an outside world, the self- awareness or consciousness of the “I”. From there, under Christ’s guidance, we can now ascend to the next higher levels of consciousness:

“There are seven stages of human consciousness: trance consciousness, deep sleep consciousness, dream consciousness, waking consciousness, psychic, superpsychic and spiritual consciousness. There are actually twelve stages of consciousness in total; the five others are creative stages of consciousness. They are those of the creators, the creative gods. These are related to the twelve signs of the zodiac. Man has to go through these twelve stages one after the other. …

One can imagine a high being, who set all twelve stages of consciousness out of himself. He himself is there as the thirteenth and will say to himself: I could not be what I am if I had not exuded these twelve stages of consciousness out of myself. – We have this case given in Christ with the twelve apostles. The twelve apostles represent the stages of consciousness through which Christ passed.”11

Christ develops the human consciousness of the “I” up to the highest state predetermined to the Son of Man, the consciousness of the Son of God. The thirteenth state of consciousness is that of the Son, who has returned to the Father. “Become perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Mt 5:48) and “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). But there is only one being that can lead us to the goal of our development. Therefore Christ also says: “No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6).

“Through the Christ impulse this «I» shall be found in an appropriate way. And the fact that within Central Europe this «I» connects itself most purely with the Christ impulse is expressed linguistically by the fact that in our [German] word «Ich» [English: «I»], through an inner spiritual necessity of progressing development, the initials of Christ, I-C-H, Jesus Christ, are expressed. This may seem like a dream to those who want to remain in the field of dreamful science today. To the one who awakens from this dreamy world view, to him this is a great, significant truth. «Ich» expresses man’s connection with Jesus Christ.”12

The twelve steps of evolution from the human being to the being of God, which culminate in a thirteenth, highest state, have their reflection in the course of the year. However, the development of creative power is reflected there separately from the development of consciousness. Just as the earthly man consists of a lower man, the metabolic man, and an upper man, the conscious man, the stages of development for attainment of the substance-producing divine creative power are reflected in the natural moods of the “lower half of the year”, the dark winter half, whereas the stages of development associated with the attainment of the divine power of consciousness are reflected in the natural moods of the “upper half of the year”, the light summer half.

In the Soul Calendar, Rudolf Steiner describes to us in his wisely chosen formulations of the weekly verses, which are partly appearing mysterious, how we can participate feelingly with our souls in the developments of the divine creative power on the one hand and the divine power of consciousness on the other hand, inspired by the changing natural moods in the course of the year. The first weekly verse of the year therefore begins immediately with the birth of the human “I”-consciousness at its lowest stage of development. This birth happens by means of a physical body equipped with physical sensory organs and a physical outside world. This gives man the already described impression that he would dwell within his body as in his “selfhood’s sheath”, which clearly separates him from the world around and places him opposite to it. That is why he describes everything in his surroundings as “objects”.

The human soul, however, is by no means as clearly separated from the outside world as it appears with regard to the body. Man’s sympathy with the play of light around him causes that his soul “unites with light, in looking”. Inside and outside world interpenetrate mutually each other, pervade each other. Through this touch of the inner soul by the outer sensory world, the I begins to loosen its close connection with the body, although it still remains closely connected with it. Accordingly, we first feel our I-consciousness as belonging to our body and living in it.

On closer inspection, however, it turns out that we experience our I predominantly outside the body. This is also shown by the fact that we are able to view our body from the outside, from the feet to the chest, even to the shoulders and the arms, and to separate it from the outside world as the “selfhood’s sheath”. But we cannot see our own head, unless we use a mirror. By experiencing ourselves, however, with our I just at the border of our body to the outside world, it becomes clear that our I is already part of this outside world, and indeed of its underlying Spiritual, which comes to us in the image of a physical outside world. This arouses our intellectual interest. Through the sensory stimuli that approach us from the outside world, we are stimulated anew, just in spring and Easter, to contemplate the new variety of perception in our environment and to expand with our thinking far into this outside world. Finally we are outside with our attention, with our I, out with the things, with the blue sky, with the warming, brightly shining sun. “Then soar, out of the sheath of self, thoughts to the distant space.” In this way we gain the possibility to grow beyond our corporeality and to realize that on the one hand we have a body equipped with sensory organs with which we awaken to our I, but on the other hand we also have a soul which is able to connect with the spirit of the outside world, to unite with it. In thought we can move out with our own Psycho-Spiritual and our I-consciousness into the sensory world and the psycho-spiritual world underlying it. In fact we are much more connected to this world through our thought life than we are initially conscious of in life on Earth, as the thoughts that we cherish here are immediately absorbed by the beings of the next higher Hierarchy of spiritual beings during the whole time of our stay on Earth:

“And just as we humans have to take our iron, our wood from the subordinate kingdoms – that is, first from the mineral, from the vegetable kingdom – to put together our machines, so the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai also need materials to do, well, say, to build – although this expression is of course very coarse – what they are to build. And what are their materials? For much what the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai have to accomplish in the spiritual world, the materials are just the thoughts that people consider their property. And that’s the way it is: As we walk through the world and cherish our thoughts, looking at our thought life, as it were, from the inside and viewing it as our property, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai work at our thoughts, without our knowledge. The very least that lives in our thoughts comes to our consciousness, because thoughts mean much more than what comes to our consciousness, much other than what lives in our souls. While we think and remember our thoughts, the named beings of the higher Hierarchy, the next Hierarchy, work, so to speak, from outside in their own way, according to the way they can use our thoughts. So imagine every human being in such a way that what happens to his consciousness is only one side of his thought life. While he is thinking, the beings of the named Hierarchies are constantly hovering around him and working with the help of his thoughts. These are their materials. And what they work in this way is part of what is needed so that Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan can emerge from the Earth. This belongs to what causes progress in the development of the universe. And during our whole life until death the mentioned beings of the higher Hierarchy work from the outside on the thoughts, in so far as these are, as it were, enclosed by our being.”13

Rudolf Steiner's choice of words points out in the first sentence of the Easter weekly verse already that our outside world includes psycho-spiritual beings. He does not say here at all what today’s man, predominantly influenced by science, would formulate usually: “When from the vastness of the world the sun shines to the human sense.” No, Rudolf Steiner says: “When from the vastness of the world the sun speaks to the human sense.” A large glowing gas ball cannot speak. It can only shine, glow or radiate. “Speaking” means the revelation of something Psycho-Spiritual. When we humans speak, we reveal a part of our own Psycho-Spiritual to those to whom we address our words. If we want to take seriously the statement of the Easter weekly verse saying that the sun “speaks”, then we must assume that behind the image of the radiant sun a psycho-spiritual being is hidden, which reveals a part of its own inner life to us and through this lightful revelation causes everything that triggers pleasure in the depths of our souls, leads our human Psycho-Spiritual – “man’s essence” –, out of the bodily sheath and raises it above the merely Earthly. The psycho-spiritual essence of the Sun and the psycho-spiritual existence, which in its revelation gives light, life and love to earthly beings, wants to connect with the human being. Who does not feel reminded hereby of the words of the great Sun Spirit Himself, who connected Himself to mankind through the Easter event two thousand years ago. He said: “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12) and “I am the Resurrection and the Life” (John 11:25). In addition, the first weekly verse even shows us the way how we can get closer to Him: by growing beyond our mortal sheaths, formed from the Maya of the sensory world. For Christ is not only life, but as He says of Himself: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” (John 14:6)

If we take the sensory outside world as a parable of a more comprehensive worldview, we can regard nature in its entirety as a Creation out of which we were born, accomplished according to the will of the Father and formed by the Spirit. The brightly shining Sun in the sky, which gives us life, light and warmth, then becomes the likeness of the Son, born of the Father’s universal oneness. The Son speaks to the human sense in the sheath of sunlight as the World Word and causes in doing so, especially at Easter time, a bodiless, spiritual birth: the birth of the human I. In 1912, the year of the first edition of the Anthroposophical Soul Calendar, Rudolf Steiner himself indicated in one of his lectures about this meaning of the Easter verse:

“What the calendar has as its exterior is only the exoteric side, for in reality we have the year 1879. The temporal relations, which can be observed through occult observation, are to be expressed here actually. This should be started here, because it is, of course, only the first step. With the mystery of Golgotha is given the birth of the I-consciousness within humanity. And this fact will gradually be more and more recognized in the spiritual culture of our Earth as important for all future of mankind. Thus one will gradually understand that it is justified to count the year 1879 today, that is, 1912 less 33, which also means that the time is counted from Easter to Easter, that we do not begin with January, because if one sees something essential for the spiritual development of humanity in the birth of the I-consciousness, it is also justified to be reminded every year by referring this birth of the I-consciousness to the relationships of microcosm and macrocosm. A significant feature in the relationship of microcosm and macrocosm is given when Easter is commemorated in connection with the birth of I-consciousness.”14

In the same way that two thousand years ago on Golgotha the Christ Being had to leave its mortal human body in order to be born into the environment of the Earth and to higher life, so we too must move out of the earthly body with our I into the vastness of the world. As long as we remain in the earthly body, our consciousness remains dusky and our thoughts “dimly bind man’s essence [his soul and I] to the existence of the spirit.” Only when we develop beyond the mere sensory experience to out-of-body perception can we, starting from the first stage of the bodily-born I-consciousness, tread the path to an ever higher development from the still childlike I of the earthly human being up to a cosmic I. Few people who are ahead of the general development of humanity, since they walk on the path of spiritual discipleship, can already within life on Earth rise to a consciousness outside “the selfhood’s sheath” and achieve some of those stages of consciousness which the human I will develop on its evolutionary journey to a cosmic I, as it is determined to it by divine procreation. All people, however, can already experience these future stages of consciousness after the death of their physical bodies, in the period between death and a new birth. During that time, the Christ Being becomes our guide through the spiritual worlds. We experience Him as the Lord in the extra-bodily existence, the living one among the supposed dead. The ancient Egyptians worshiped Him in this capacity as Osiris, the ruler of the afterlife, and knew that every human being dies towards Osiris, into the Osiris. The ancient Rosicrucians also recognized these connections and put them into the words “In Christo morimur” – “Towards Christ or into Christ we die.” They hid this knowledge in the letters “I C M” or “I J M” (In Jesu morimur).

We recognize the astonishing spiritual depth of the words of the first weekly verse and that a very intimate, spiritual Easter-Atmosphere hides behind their shell. In this mood resonates the fact that the “Ex deo nascimur” finds its fulfillment in the course of the year with the Easter time and the birth of the earthly human I on the physical and bodily sensory experiences of the outside world, as the germinative birth of the Son of God in the human soul. The possibility of any further development of the newborn earthly I is given to man solely through the power and guidance of the Son. Through the new impulse of the “In Christo morimur”, He immediately shows us the way from the earthly corporeality and the Earth’s surface into the spiritual vastness of the world, which we can experience with the physical senses at first only as “distant space”, but behind which are hidden extra-bodily worlds to which we will all belong after death. We contribute to this development from the dull earthly consciousness up to the clearest and highest spiritual-divine consciousness, if we already feel and experience beforehand the individual developmental steps every year in the successive moods of nature in its annual cycle. For the course of the year, like everything material, is only a reflection of a higher, wider process of development, entirely in the sense of Goethe’s saying at the end of the second part of his Faust drama: “All that is transient is but a likeness. The unobtainable – what we cannot yet attain within the world of the transient – here it becomes achieveness” 15, in the world beyond the veil of the senses.

It may seem strange to some readers to see the mood of Easter and of spring, with the new birth of earthly life that takes place everywhere, associated with man’s death and afterlife. However, such disconcertment can arise only in our present, materialistically oriented time, in which all instinctive clairvoyance of the ancient times has completely disappeared. In the past, a sympathizing with the course of the year gave completely different experiences to the people, just contradictory experiences compared to our times:

“But above all, man experienced the course of the year in such a way that when he followed the soul of the Earth out into the cosmos towards the spring time and towards the time of St. John’s Day, he learned every year by this following also to follow the spiritual beings of the higher Hierarchies and especially to follow the deceased souls who had already died in the world. In ancient times, people were aware that when they sympathized with the course of the year, they learned to follow the deceased souls, so to speak, to see how their deceased were doing. And people felt: spring not only brings them the first flowers, spring also gives them the opportunity to look at their deceased, to see how they are doing. – Something Spiritual was very concretely connected with the experience of the course of the year.”16

From these reflections we can already see what great, truly breathtaking depths we can expect in the further weekly verses of the Soul Calendar. Now we also understand better the mysterious reference that Rudolf Steiner gave us in the preface to the first edition of the Soul Calendar on Easter 1912, when he prophesied what the weekly verses are able to reveal to man:

“But great secrets of existence can be revealed to him, if he brings his timeless rhythm of perception and thought to the temporal rhythm of nature in an appropriate manner. Thus the year becomes the archetype of human soul activity and thus a fruitful source of true self-knowledge.”.

What Rudolf Steiner meant with “self-knowledge”, and thus true “knowledge of the human being”, illuminates a different statement of him:

“Knowledge of the human being will only be possible if it can start with the lowest forms of the phenomenal world, with everything that manifests itself to man as the material world. And what thus begins with the contemplation of what manifests as the material world must end with the contemplation of the hierarchical world. From the lowest forms of material existence up to the highest forms of spiritual existence, up to the world of Hierarchies, must be sought that, which can then lead to real knowledge of the human being.”17

Rudolf Steiner has left us a very great spiritual treasure with his Soul Calendar. It can turn into a true guide through the extrasensory worlds if we are only able really to penetrate to those depths that are hidden behind the words of the weekly verses, although they are always referring to the sensory world. Through this reference to the sensory experiences of external nature we are repeatedly “grounded” and protected from the drive to be alienated from the Earth too much and too early, in our consideration on the psycho-spiritual depths behind the weekly verses.

We may guess already as well, what a high goal will be at the end of this journey, if we allow ourselves to be guided by Christ. He Himself is the path through the metamorphoses of life. Where this path leads us, he revealed to us with the words: “No one comes to the Father but through me” and “Become perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Mt 5:48) The Father from whom we were born – ex Deo nascimur – is our origin and also our goal. But before we can find the Father, we must first find the Son. That we are able to walk this path we owe to Christ, the only begotten Son. At Easter about two thousand years ago he opened the way through the mystery of Golgotha to all of us. Since then, the “in Christo morimur” has been possible for all of us. And that is necessary, because otherwise we would lose with death not only our physical body, but also our I-consciousness that we can only acquire in life on Earth.

“For, the physical body disintegrates at death. If we have acquired our I-consciousness through it, then the anxiety arises, which is quite a scientifically founded fearfulness: How do we carry our I-consciousness through death?

This question is only solved by the mystery of Golgotha. Never would humanity be able to carry the I-consciousness through death, unless this I-consciousness, developed in the physical body, unites with the Christ, who holds it, when it would melt away with the physical body from the human soul. The I-consciousness is acquired through the physical body. In death it would melt away with the physical body from the human soul, if this I were not connected to the being of Christ, in the sense of Paul’s words «Not I, but the Christ in me»; for the Christ takes it and carries it through death.” 18

Christ preserves our I-consciousness until the great midnight hour of existence in the midst of two incarnations, where we are endowed with new powers to cope with the descent to a new life on Earth and the further development of the human I-consciousness to ever higher levels in ever closer union with Christ.

Ascension to the Moon Sphere – 2nd Week

The first weekly verse describes, how, at Easter time, excited by the sensory stimuli of the increasing sunlight, man’s thoughts “soar out of the selfhood’s sheath”, the physical body, “to the distant space” and thereby “dully bind man’s essence to the existence of the spirit”. In the second weekly verse, the expansion of the psycho-spiritual essence of man is continued. It is driven to the moment when he finally leaves his earthly body, passes through the portal of death and experiences his “In Christo morimur”. First and foremost, the amazing experience of the soul results for him: “You have gone out of your physical body and are leaving this physical body behind.”19 But while the deceased person experiences himself as being separated from his physical body, frees himself from his earthly materiality and returns it to Earth, all the contents of his consciousness gained in life on Earth go the exactly opposite way. It is true, that for a few days they appear in front of his soul’s eye in a large commemorative tableau, so that he can once again overlook his entire past life on Earth. But soon the newly deceased person notices how his entire world of thoughts, all his memories, detach themselves from him and escape into the cosmos. They are taken away from him by the beings of the so-called third Hierarchy, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai, who work out a large etheric overall-tissue from the thoughts of the individual human beings:

“And when we pass through the portal of death, then, as we already pointed out in my previous presence, some time after we have passed through the portal of death, our ether body will be taken from us and woven into the general world ether. Not only that, which we see by looking at one side of our thought-tissue at last, is interwoven here, but also that, which the above-mentioned beings have worked out, is interwoven into the general world ether. While working, so to speak, on our individual thought-tissue during our lives, they then assemble the individual thought-tissues of one, of the other, of the third person, as they may be needed, so that something new may come about in the course of the further development of the world. This must be interwoven into the general world ether, which they can acquire by assembling the individual human ether bodies they have worked on during the time of physical life.

... What we can give to these beings, the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, forms for the whole time, which we then live between death and a new birth, something we have to look at, we have to watch. We know that it is taken from us a few days after we have passed through the portal of death. But while living on between death and a new birth, our soul’s gaze is constantly focused on that which we have been able to give for the general world-ether-tissue. And while we ourselves now in turn have to contribute to the production of that which will later on connect with physical matter in order to give us a new incarnation, this work of ours is influenced by the view of what we have given to the great world. In short, concerning the way we will be able to prepare for our new incarnation, much will depend on whether we have something to look at from which we can draw new impulses for a next incarnation in this thought-tissue interwoven with the world ether, or whether we cannot.”20

The second weekly verse speaks of this process of detachment of the ether body and its interweaving into the general world ether, its interweaving with the ether bodies of all the other deceased persons by the beings of the spiritual world. In short, it speaks of the transition of the separate existence of human thought life to a general existence.

2nd Week (14 - 20 April)

2. Woche (14. – 20. April)

Into the outside of the sensory universe

Ins Äußre des Sinnenalls

Thought power loses own existence.

Verliert Gedankenmacht ihr Eigensein;

Thus, spirit-worlds now find

Es finden Geisteswelten

The human shoot again,

Den Menschensprossen wieder,

Which has to find its germ in them,

Der seinen Keim in ihnen,

Its own soul’s fruit yet in itself.

Doch seine Seelenfrucht

In sich muss finden.

How does man himself experience this fundamental change of his thought life, which starts just a few days after death?

“When the moment comes when man steps through the portal of death, then little by little – it takes a few days –, after the physical body is put off, that, which I have called the ether body or the formative force-body in my writings, separates from the I and from the astral body. This separation is such that the person, who has passed through the portal of death, feels that his thoughts, which he has hitherto only regarded as something that is within himself, are realities, which are expanding more and more. Two, three, four days after death, man has the feeling: You actually consist of thoughts, but these thoughts diverge. – Man as a thought being becomes larger and larger and finally man’s entire thought being dissolves into the cosmos.”21