Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul Verse 44
Introduced by Larry Young
Ergreifend neue Sinnesreize
Erfüllet Seelenklarheit
Eingedenk vollzogener Geistgeburt,
Verwirrend sprossend Weltenwerden
Mit meines Denkens Schöpferwillen.
Grasping new stirrings of the senses,
In mindfulness of spirit-birth achieved,
Soul-clarity now fills
Bewildering, springing growth of worlds
With the creative will of my own Thinking.
(transl. Ernst Lehrs)
Noticing through her senses new delights
soul recalls spirit lately brought to birth,
pervading with her own serenity
born of creative willing in my thought
a world’s chaotic bursting into life.
(transl. Owen Barfield)
The following is from a lecture by Rudolf Steiner called Richard Wagner and Mysticism, given in Nuremberg on December 2nd, 1907
(https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/RicWag_index.html;mark=1013,31,41#WN_mark)
The pupils of the Grail were told of a state to which man would attain in the future. Possessed of clear, alert consciousness, his being would be purified, the substance of his body would become as pure and chaste as that of the plant, and his organs of reproduction transformed. The idea living in the minds of the Knights of the Grail was that the man of the future will have powers of reproduction not filled with the element of desire but as chaste and pure as the calyx which turns towards the ‘love-lance’ — the rays of the sun. The Grail Ideal will be fulfilled when man brings forth his like with the purity and chastity of the plant, when he brings forth his own image in the higher calyx and becomes a creator in the Spirit. This ideal was known as the Holy Grail, the transformed reproductive organs which bring forth the human being as purely and as chastely as the word is brought forth to-day by the waves of air working through the larynx.
And now let us see how this sublime ideal lived on the heart and soul of Richard Wagner. — In the year 1857, on Good Friday, he was standing on the balcony of the summer-house at the Villa Wesendonck and as he looked out over the landscape he saw the budding of the early spring flowers. The sight of the young plants revealed to him the mystery of the Holy Grail, the mystery of the coming-to-birth of all that is implicit in the image of the Holy Grail. All this he felt in connection with Good Friday and in the mood that fell upon him the first idea of Parsifal was born. Many things happened in the intervening period but the feeling remained in him and out of it he created the figure of Parsifal — the figure in whom knowledge is sublimated to feeling, the figure who having suffered for others, becomes “a knower through compassion.” And the Amfortas-mystery portrays how human nature in the course of evolution has been wounded by the lance of defiled love.