Rhythms of Light and the Path of the Calendar of the Soul —A New Approach to the Dimension of Time—

by Richard Steel, Karl Koenig Institute

The rhythms of the year and of the human soul within it are experienced as we journey through the 52 verses of the Calendar of the Soul . We are thereby connecting our own rhythmic system with the breathing process of the year and the being of the Earth. Another level is the environmental questions we are facing today – a worthy theme for another article.

With the Calendar of the Soul , we begin the journey into the year at Easter, and are gradually expanding our soul in harmony with the breathing out of the Earth’s soul. Yet at Michaelmas, we do not follow the death processes of nature, but rather, we turn at the halfway point of the year to an inner growth and ripening process; it is equivalent to breathing in. And this breathing process becomes more and more inward as we make our way through the Michaelmas season into winter. We gradually become the focus in our inner journey, in that we are giving our summer gains to the Earth:

And , waking, carry sun’s fiery glow

Into the surge of winter’s flow at the crossing point from Michaelmas to winter, when we hear that the world would be but empty life if we did not carry into it the compassion of our souls. Indeed, Without creating itself anew through souls / It could of itself find only death. A strong warning – but it is given with a strong possibility that the world can create itself anew through souls! What is the path of souls that awaken to this responsibility? It is the path of connecting with the forces of creation themselves, and of beginning to realize how these creative forces become more and more the center of our being. And these creative forces are forces of ether, they are forces of time.

As our awareness grows of how we as human beings journey through the Calendar of the Soul , we can arrive at the experience that it is a very central path of anthroposophical practice. It is not one leading us off into spirit realms, away from the world of the senses!

Already at the end of Easter time, at Ascension week, we hear the strong warning in verse 7: My self it threatens to flee / Strongly lured by the light of worlds! We are then asked in verse 9 to lose ourselves in order to find ourselves! In this way, we are discovering more and more how, as human beings are involved in self-development, we become responsible for world development

Verse 33 is an extremely strong reminder of this, just

The dimension of time does not exist in the spiritual world – there, everything is omnipresent. Does time really exist on Earth? Well certainly if one asks around, the one thing no one has is time ! Is that not a central phenomenon of our times ? It would certainly seem that parallel to the growth of materialism, time has become mainly a spatial experience. Time can then almost be seen as synonymous with “development.” The more humanity has withdrawn from its natural habitat on Earth, the more time has become a measurable, constant element depicted by outer calendars, clocks and increasingly, by digital abstractions. The washing machine and the automobile, trains and airplanes, were thought to be creating so much time for human beings. Yet time became increasingly scarce until suddenly, we can overcome time altogether and through the forces of light that have “fallen” – been forced into electricity – we can create a duplicate of the spirit world, where everything is omnipresent. So-called artificial intelligence is merely the perfection of this duplicate, or maybe we can say specter. Social life has become void of time – and this means it becomes devoid of possibilities for development. We no longer write a letter that takes a week to arrive, wait while the receiver lives with it or perhaps consciously sleeps over it and brings an answer into consciousness, writes it down and sends it on its journey. Unthinkable today.

If time as a dimension enters into Earthly space, it does so through rhythm. We see this clearly in the plant world, but we also see it in the many rhythms of the human body and bodily processes. Similarly, we can expect that our path towards the spirit also needs rhythms. Rudolf Steiner once brought this as a pearl of wisdom:

One learns to live in eternity

When understanding how to solve

One’s relation to time.

And the path to time seems to depend on rhythm. In the preface to the Calendar of the Soul , 1912, we read the following very condensed statement of Rudolf Steiner: Through the verses expressing the characteristic moods of the respective week [we] can experience the timeless cycle of soul life in relation to time Soul life needs to strive towards time, to connect to time, which expresses itself in rhythms.

Let us consider briefly where the Calendar of the Soul came from. Certainly, out of Rudolf Steiner’s connection to the spirit world – and perhaps very directly so, taking into consideration how often we hear from him what speaks in the depths of our soul This is named in the Calendar quite clearly, for instance in Advent (a time when there are still traditions for preparing a festival – adventus means expectancy, preparation):

Within my being’s depths speaks,

Striving to reveal itself,

Mysteriously, the cosmic word:

And then we hear what it speaks!

Fill the aims of your work

With your spirit light about the Gospel of St. Mark, in Berlin 1910/1911. It was at the end of those amazing lecture tours from north to south, east to west in Europe, that he had tried to prepare people for the coming possibility of a new Christ experience – within not the physical, but the etheric world. It was the last battle with the Theosophical Society and consequent founding of the Anthroposophical Society, when rumors about a new physical incarnation of Christ were being spread.

To of fer yourself through me.

And in the lectures around and after Christmas 1910/11, we hear of the great task of the Gospel of Mark, to give an experience of the connection between macrocosmos and microcosmos. One lecture begins to explain how important it will be for humanity to gain forces of the macrocosmos through rhythmical life cycles, and how our ideas and impulses can only thus be baptized by spirit beings.

Directly after this, Rudolf Steiner states that we will need a new connection to time, and will, therefore, need an inner calendar for the future. Surely an indication was given that needed to be taken up.

We should take heed of the challenges Rudolf Steiner builds into these words striving, mysteriously, and even the sentence structure helps us to find our way into – the being of time.

But apart from searching within the verses to find what speaks and how it speaks, we need to be aware of the birth of this impulse through the course of historic time Rudolf Steiner laid a foundation for this in his course

And indeed on the next journey, which was to Italy, Imma von Eckartstein accompanied Rudolf and Marie Steiner, and she asked the right question – Do we need a new form of calendar for our work? Immediately Rudolf Steiner gave Imma the task of designing new drawings for the signs of the zodiac; and he would also prepare something. And so, after the fateful Christmas time of 1911/12, in Berlin once more, the new drawings and the 52 verses for the weeks of the year were combined and printed for the first time as the Calendar. The book alone was a challenge because it showed how Easter must become the center of life, the start of the inner year ; additionally, Sunday was to be seen as the beginning to each week, and – probably to everyone’s dismay – although it was the year 1912/1913 (Easter to Easter), the date on the front was 1879. Yes, the year he had already named as the beginning of the Michael presence on earth…but of course, if the year begins with Easter instead of Christmastime (in January), then it starts 33 and one third years later. That was quite a radical move and seemingly too difficult for people to follow. But to renew our connection to time is also not an easy undertaking.

Perhaps our understanding of the significance of the Calendar and its 52 enigmatic verses can be enhanced by contemplating the historic context; not only as preparation for our abilities to perceive the Christ being in the etheric realm, but also as a path to include the influences of the spirit once more in Earthly matters. As we know from the verse given to Marie Steiner before the burning of the Goetheanum: Once the stars spoke to human beings and now, we must find our connection to the stars. Only a short time later the new impulse was given to the world: The Foundation Stone – words spoken directly to human hearts. The central verse tells how the human soul lives in the rhythms of heart and lung, and that just in this realm a new path of practice can evolve: Practice spirit-sensing is the call – a new path of heart thinking developing out of our true feelings (And you will truly feel):

For the Christ-Will in the surrounding circle holds sway Bestowing grace upon souls, in the rhythms of worlds.

In many ways, the path of the Calendar of the Soul can be seen as an exact preparation for the Foundation Stone, still today preparing the heart space needed and preparing the turning point of time also for us today.

The breathing process of the year is also a process of light – growing, receding, and being reborn. The Calen- dar of the Soul tells of this process and gives us a path of practice. Time forces can be newly created through our inner work – and given to the being of the Earth – which also today can no longer breathe. Perhaps if we commit to find our new connection to time, stars can begin to speak once more – and spirit beings can work into Earthly space.

And perhaps it can also be seen as a re-enlivening of light itself, that no longer is only forced into time-destroying technical intelligence, but can be reborn as cosmic thought – cosmic intelligence – within human life.

The rhythms of the Calendar of the Soul that Karl Koenig suggested to take up* (also a worthwhile theme for another article), show us how the process of light breathing can lead to a new experience of world thought. The verses 5, 22, 31, like the three first verses of the Foundation Stone, lead us in verse 48 to a turning point in time :

In the light which from world heights

Would flow mightily to the soul,

May world thought’s certainty appear,

Resolving riddles of the soul

And gathering its radiant power

In human hearts love evoking.

It is meaningful that this is the verse of the week into which the birth of Rudolf Steiner appeared, February 27, 1861.

*Karl Koenig: The Calendar of The Soul, A Commentary