Michaelmas and Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul
On April 11, 1912, Rudolf Steiner distributed the first copies of the
Calendar 1912/13 in Helsinki, Finland, after a lecture to a group of
Russians. The 52 verses we know today as the Calendar of the Soul
appeared at the end of the original publication. The only statement that
Steiner made on that occasion was: “Whoever meditates on these verses
will achieve a great deal.”
So, how do we meditate on these weekly verses during the course of
the year? We will focus on the Michaelmas verse as an example. The
fifty-two verses in the Calendar of the Soul accompany us through the
seasons and the festivals, always starting with the first verse on Easter
Sunday. With one exception all of the verses given for the years 1912-
1913 were dated to begin on Sunday of each week. Even the Michaelmas
verse (#26) happened to fall on a Sunday (September 29, 1912).
Rudolf Steiner gave various guidelines for working with the verses in the
two introductions that he wrote for the 1912 and 1918 editions. But for the
purpose of this short study we will add another indication that Steiner
offered in a lecture on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1923:
“They (human beings) must gain once more the esoteric force out of
themselves to “speak” something into Nature that accords with natural
events. It must become possible to grasp the Michael thought as the
blossom of the Easter thought. While the Easter thought stems from
physical blossoming, it will become possible to place the blossom of the
Easter thought – the Michael thought – into the course of the year as the
outcome of physical withering. People must learn once more to ‘think’ the
spiritual ‘together with’ the course of nature.” (Rudolf Steiner, The Cycle of
the Year as Breathing-Process of the Earth. Anthroposophic Press, 1984).
The Michaelmas verse in the Calendar of the Soul can serve to illustrate
the comments that Rudolf Steiner made. We begin by observing that the
yearly life cycle of the archetypal plant weaves like a thread throughout the
course of the 52 verses. One could observe that the blossom stage of the
plant just barely begins at Easter with the first opening of the bud. The
expansion into a full blossom is achieved after St. John’s Tide in verse 13.
Verse 14 ushers in the hint of contraction only to eventually give rise to the
expansion of the fruit at the expense of the withering blossom and then of
the whole plant. The Michaelmas verse corresponds to the moment of
peak ripeness of the fruit, the perfect environment for the seeds within to
mature, a process also of expansion and contraction that ends after
Christmas with verse 39. We absorb the processes that we observe in
nature through our senses into our life of soul. But we also can say that at
every stage of the plant cycle something is being born at the expense of a
former stage. Each stage must “die” in order for the next stage to happen.
This is the essence of metamorphosis and of Rosicrucian meditative
practice. The bud must “die” in order for the blossom to form. The fruit
must perish in order to nurture the seeds. The seed must give up its seedlike
state in order to allow the sprout to break forth.
Let us marvel at the Michaelmas verse itself:
Michaelmas Mood
O Nature, thy maternal life, Natur, dein muettlerliches Sein
I carry it within my will, Ich trage es in meinem Willenswesen;
And my fiery power of willing Und meines Willens Feuermacht,
Steels my spirit’s promptings, Sie staehlet meines Geistes Triebe,
Engendering the feel of self Dass sie gebaeren Selbstgefuehl
That carries Me in me. Zu tragen mich in mir.
(translation by John Gardner, 1995)
The meditant calls out to Nature, addresses Nature in the way one
would speak to a close friend (dein is the familiar singular possessive
pronoun “thy/your” in German). We then acknowledge that we carry
Nature’s maternal instinct within the being of our own will. The other
element within our will is the fiery power, inherited from the summer, that
heats up and forges the “promptings”. The “promptings” are what lie deep
within our spirit, like the seeds inside of the fruit, needing to be hardened
(steeled!) in order to survive the winter.
But these promptings can be understood as impulses of the spirit that
we are born with and that we nurture within the soul. The Michaelmas
verse points to a dynamic of soul that gives birth (gebaeren) to a sheath for
the feeling of self. The process is very much like strengthening the shell of
the seed so that it can harbor the spark that becomes the shoot of a new
plant in the spring. This is achieved through the right balance of growth
and decay, birth and death, Lucifer and Ahriman.
We can also let the imagination of Michael with the sword and the
scales arise in the background during the course of meditating the
Michaelmas verse. The image of the dragon trying to tip the scales with his
claw-like finger begins to appear as we journey further through the autumn
verses. The fruit falls from the tree and the seeds penetrate into the earth.
Thus we learn that the metamorphosis of the plant mirrors the development
of our soul. With the strengthened forces of soul the self with its protective
sheath is enabled to dive deep into the spirit: O human being, know thou
thyself! We are treading the path of initiation.
Rudolf Steiner added one more dimension at the end of his 1923 Easter
lecture: “When it is understood how to think with the course of the year,
then forces will intermingle with the thoughts that will let men again hold a
dialogue with the divine spiritual powers revealing themselves from the
stars.” The unique feature of the Michaelmas verse in the Calendar of the
Soul lies in the moment when we speak to the goddess “Natura.” The mood
of the verse is one of praise and gratitude for the gifts we receive from the
earth and from the cosmos for sake of developing our true “I.” The most
precious maternal gift of all is selfless love, the “blossom of the Easter
thought,” placed into our consciousness at Michaelmas!
Herbert O. Hagens
Princeton, New Jersey