Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul Verse 48

Introduced by John Riede

The earth all around-about is astir with life as the winter chill recedes.  A person sees it, senses it, and inserts the “I am” into it.  And what is most impressive is the quality of the light just now.  I am drawn into it, not in a trance, but full of thinking, feeling, and willing, soul qualities that have been composting during the winter.  Now they are sprouting forth.  Fortunately, German is almost the same as English, and the phrase “der Seele machtvoll fliessen will” translates directly into “the soul will mightily fly, flow, sail, and course within it.”  The wonder of the newly enlivened light not only draws us in, but we enter into it, we flow into it, we sail in it with awakening willfulness, purposefully.

Then appears erscheine, meaning it appears, in the subjunctive, so it could, should, would, might appear.  What should appear?  The certainty of world thinking.  Note that it is Denken, thinking, and not Gedanken, thoughts.  Also note that it is Welten, which is the sum total of the experience of a person, and not Kosmische, which is the more narrow total experience of a person in the material universe.  There is also the world of music, art, philosophy, mathematics, and of course the spiritual world that is part of the human experience, and therefore of the human world.     

And just what is the certainty of world thinking doing? It is gathering its mighty strands, it is waking love in human hearts, it is solving riddles of the soul.  Note that it is not awakening, which is intransitive.  We awaken when our longing to be back in our material body is strong enough to overcome our need to recuperate in the spiritual world during sleep.  It is waking, transitive.  Just as a boat forms a wake in the water, it wakes the water, just as people hold a wake in the 3 days after death to wake the person properly in the spiritual world, the certainly of world thinking wakes love in human hearts.  It wakes love as the soul is flowing, flying, sailing within the light from on high. 

Original poetic translation by John Riedel:

In the light from heavenly height
Sails the soul with inner might,
Soul solutions that long were sought
Appear in certain celestial thought,
And gathered mighty streams above
In human hearts awaken love.