Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul, Verse 17
Introduced by Walter Alexander
From Blake’s First Book of Urizen, 1796
Translations by column:
original German by Rudolf Steiner, Daisy Aldan, Owen Barfield, John F. Gardner
Brigitte Knaak, Isabel Grieve, Ernst Lehrs, Ruth & Hans Pusch
Jonathan Hilton’s astrosophy letter from July 30th conveyed a concordant message: “And since we are now beginning the seedling start of the Michael season with the Aquariid meteors this weekend and then the great Perseid meteor shower in mid August, its time to start awakening to our work of bringing resurrection forces again into the world as our harvest in preparation for autumn.
I found a lot of the material on Eloise Krivosheia’s site helpful: https://anthroposophyla.org/wp-content/uploads/Calendar-of-the-Soul-Verse-17-2022.pdf
Especially this:
In Leading Thoughts #18-19 Rudolf Steiner wrote: “In Nature’s existence we find the Spirit “asleep”. Yet just as sleep has its task in human life — as the ‘I’ must be asleep at one time in order to be the more awake at another — so must the World-Spirit be asleep where Nature is, in order to be the more awake elsewhere.
“In relation to the World, the soul of man is like a dreamer if it does not pay heed to the Spirit at work within it. The Spirit awakens the dreams of the soul from its ceaseless weaving in the inner life, to active participation in the World where man’s true Being has its origin. As the dreamer shuts himself off from the surrounding physical world and entwines himself into himself, so would the soul lose connection with the Spirit of the World in whom it has its source, if it turned a deaf ear to the awakening calls of the Spirit within it.”
For an auditory resonance, you can listen to Bach’s Cantata 140 (“Sleepers Wake!”). It’s for the last Sunday before Advent, so the culmination of the autumn leading to the Christmas season. The Netherlands Bach Society offers this fine performance.