The Calendar of the Soul
GA 40
Current Verse 12
Sun: Beautiful cosmic radiance
Moon: Compels me from depths of soul
Mars: Divine powers of independent existence
Mercury: To release to cosmic flight;
Jupiter: To leave myself
Venus: Trusting only my own seeking
Saturn: In cosmic light and cosmic warmth.
—Tr. Steiner Online Library
Foreword
Rudolf Steiner's Calendar of the Soul offers powerful verses to awaken the soul to an experience of spiritual forces that resound within us throughout the year. By contemplating these truths during the changing seasons, one begins to notice how life itself wants to be awakened in us so we may more consciously participate in the world's course as it unfolds in time. The first verse starts with Easter during the blossoming of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere.1Since it is autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, Week 27 may be a more appropriate the starting point on Easter Sunday.
Corresponding Verses of Seven Lines Each
This novel translation offers pairs of mirrored "corresponding verses" of seven lines each to reflect the changes of the soul's striving each week throughout the year. Also consider the cosmic influences each day of the week in each set of corresponding verses.
| Day | Cosmic Influence |
|---|---|
| Sunday | Sun - freedom, generosity, wisdom, enlightenment |
| Monday | Moon – density, lunacy, confusion, materialism |
| Tuesday | Mars – knightly discipline, courage & orderliness or cruelty and lawlessness; war-like |
| Wednesday | Mercury – active power, temperamental, ability to divide and recombine like quicksilver |
| Thursday | Jupiter – tragic splendor, kingliness, magnanimity, festal joy |
| Friday | Venus – love, union, beauty, creativity |
| Saturday | Saturn – death, treachery, sorrow, pestilence |
The Light Verses
Only four of the fifty-two verses start the first line with "the Light." Two of them land five weeks before and after Easter (verses 5 and 48) begin with "In the Light." The verses five weeks before and five weeks after Michaelmas (verses 22 and 31) begin with "The Light." While the difference is subtle, it reveals our shifting relationship to the light of the Sun as we move into the light of summer during weeks 5 and 48 and withdraw from it during weeks 22 and 31 as we move into winter. One can visualize this journey through the seasons in the image above in which the Light Verses are starred.
Our oscillating relationship to the Sun can be likened to the rhythmic system of our heart (blood, lungs, and feeling) connecting our lower body (the metabolic system and our willing) with that of our head (our senses, nervous system and thinking). The lower body can be likened to the hardened winter and Ahrimanic influences while our upper body is akin to the airy Luciferic impulses of warm summer. We balance these polar forces with the Christ in the heart.
The Dark Corner Verses
Four of the fifty-two verses offer dark warnings. Two caution against the dangers of losing oneself and spiritual suicide from Luciferic temptations in the summer and two warn of Ahrimanic temptations from which the soul risks spiritual benumbing and even soul death in the winter. They appear in the middle of each quarter of the year in verses 7, 20, 33, and 46. In verse 7, the Soul must be careful not to fly away with Luciferic temptation as it moves into summer. One must restore the power of thinking developed during the winter. In verse 20, Luciferic impulses must once again be overcome as the Soul approaches autumn. One must become grounded in the world or be extinguished as if by spiritual suicide. In verse 33, a material, Ahrimanic risk arises, warning that the world without soul-life can find only death. One must participate in the world to enliven the frozen, empty space. Then, in verse 46, another Ahrimanic risk presents itself as the Soul must use its memory from spirit depths to guide it into the future. The soul must take stock of the past and present to properly arise once again in the coming Easter.
Formulae Essential for Anthroposophy
Careful attention to the original German text reveals actual formulae for human evolution. The text brings the practitioner through a contemplation of polar spiritual and physical forces working in the human soul throughout the year.
Published in the same year as the founding of the Anthroposophical Society in 1912, Steiner held the Calendar's intrinsic connection to all of anthroposophy required its sharing, stating: "It is not to be regarded as a sudden inspiration but as something organically connected with our whole Movement."
These formulae for meditation do in all reality lead the soul out of its narrow confines to experience of the heavens. I can assure you that the results of long, long occult investigations are contained in these 52 verses which will enable the soul to find access to happenings in the great universe and thereby to experience the Spirits working in the onward flow of Time. But if you ponder on the texts of the verses in the Calendar you will discern an element of Timelessness, in rhythmic alternation, an element that is experienced inwardly by the human being, the laws of which run parallel to those of Time in the outer world. Mere analogies do not suffice here.
See Rudolf Steiner, GA 143, May 7, 1912, Cologne.
It is a moving calendar that flows with changing dates from one Easter to the next because "in what is uniform and fixed there is the impress of death; but in what is unequal there is life." The Event of Golgotha is "the most momentous of all" since time is to be computed as beginning "on a Friday in April in the year 33 A.D. when the Mystery of Golgotha took place" and "Ego-consciousness in the present sense was actually born." Out of the ultimate death of Christ-Jesus, arose the possibility of new life in the Spirit for all of humanity. By contemplating The Calendar of the Soul verses from on Easter to the next, we bring cosmic wisdom into our souls so we may rise ourselves from this deadened world to join our true place as Human Beings as the fourth Hierarchy of Heaven.
For more information about these transformative verses, see these additional resources:
Preface to the First Edition, 1912/13 by Rudolf Steiner
Preface to the second edition, 1918 by Rudolf Steiner
Calendar of the Soul Tool - Multiple translations updated weekly for Northern and Southern Hemispheres
— Foreword and translation by Steiner Online Library
The Calendar of the Soul Verses
Week 1 (Spring - Easter)
Sun: When out of widest worlds
Moon: The Sun speaks to human senses
Mars: And joy from depths of Soul unites with light beholding,
Mercury: Then draw from selfhood's sheath
Jupiter: Thoughts into space's wide expanse
Venus: And gropingly bind
Saturn: Human essence with Spirit Being.
Week 52
Sun: When from depths of soul
Moon: Spirit turns to world existence
Mars: And beauty flows from space's wide expanse,
Mercury: Then draw from distant Heavens
Jupiter: Force of Life in human bodies
Venus: And mightily unite
Saturn: Spirit essence with Human Being.
Week 2
Sun: Into the outer world of the senses
Moon: The power of thought loses its own being;
Mars: Spirit worlds are found
Mercury: In the human sprouting again,
Jupiter: The seed of existence in them,
Venus: But the fruit of the soul
Saturn: Must be found within oneself.
Week 51
Sun: Into the interior of the human being
Moon: The richness of the senses pours out;
Mars: The world Spirit is found
Mercury: In the mirror image
Jupiter: Of human eyes,
Venus: But the power must come from within
Saturn: To create oneself anew.
Week 3
Sun: There speaks to the World-All,
Moon: Forgetting itself
Mars: And mindful of its primordial state,
Mercury: The human growing I:
Jupiter: Into You, freeing myself
Venus: From the shackles of my idiosyncrasies,
Saturn: I explore my genuine nature.
Week 50
Sun: There speaks to the human ego,
Moon: Revealing itself powerfully
Mars: And unleashing the forces of Its essence,
Mercury: The World-Being's joy of becoming:
Jupiter: In you, My life carried
Venus: Out of its spell-bound state,
Saturn: I reach my true goal.
Week 4
Sun: I feel the essence of my being:
Moon: Thus speaks perceptive feeling,
Mars: Which in the sunlit world
Mercury: Unites itself with floods of light;
Jupiter: Offering warmth for clarity of thought
Venus: And firmly connect man and world
Saturn: United in solidarity.
Week 49
Sun: I feel the force of the world's existence:
Moon: Thus speaks clarity of thought,
Mars: In dark nights of the world
Mercury: Remembering its own spirit-growth,
Jupiter: And turning toward the approaching world-day
Venus: Out of its interior
Saturn: Rays of inner hope.
Week 5 (Light Verse)
Sun: In the Light from Spirit-depths
Moon: Weaving fruitfully in space
Mars: The creation of the gods revealed:
Mercury: In it, the essence of the soul appears
Jupiter: Expanded into world-being
Venus: And resurrected out of condensed selfhood
Saturn: Inner power.
Week 48 (Light Verse)
Sun: In the Light from Cosmic-heights
Moon: Wanting to flow powerfully into the soul,
Mars: It appears, solving soul riddles,
Mercury: World-thinking clarified,
Jupiter: Gathering its inner rays of power,
Venus: Awakening love
Saturn: In human hearts.
Week 6
Sun: There has arisen from separation
Moon: My Self, which finds itself
Mars: As a revelation of the world
Mercury: In forces of time and space;
Jupiter: The world, it shows me everywhere
Venus: As divine archetype of my own reflection,
Saturn: Truth.
Week 47
Sun: Wanting to arise from World-wombs,
Moon: Refreshing the senses,
Mars: The zest-of-becoming.
Mercury: Find the forces of my thinking
Jupiter: Prepared through Divine powers
Venus: Which live powerfully in me,
Saturn: In my innermost Self.
Week 7 (Dark Verse - Luciferic Threat)
Sun: My Self, it threatens to fly away,
Moon: To the Light of worlds drawn powerfully.
Mars: Now you, my prescience
Mercury: Step forcefully into your rightful place,
Jupiter: Replace my power of thinking,
Venus: Which in the glare of the senses
Saturn: Wants to lose itself.
Week 46 (Dark Verse - Ahrimanic Threat)
Sun: The world, it threatens to numb
Moon: The soul's innate power;
Mars: Now you, memory,
Mercury: Shine forth from Spirit-depths
Jupiter: And strengthen my vision,
Venus: Which only through willpower
Saturn: Can sustain itself.
Verse 8 (Whitsun/Pentecost)
Sun: The power of the senses grows
Moon: In union with the gods' creating,
Mars: It presses down the power of thought
Mercury: To the dullness of dreams.
Jupiter: When divine beings
Venus: Desire to unite with my soul,
Saturn: Must human thought humble itself in dreams.
Verse 45
Sun: The power of thought is strengthened
Moon: In union with Spirit's birthing,
Mars: It brightens the dull stimulus of the senses
Mercury: To complete clarity
Jupiter: When fullness of soul
Venus: Desires union with world-becoming
Saturn: Must sensory revelation receive the light of thought.
Verse 9
Sun: Forgetting my own will
Moon: The warmth of worlds, heralding summer
Mars: Fills my spirit and soul;
Mercury: To lose myself in Light
Jupiter: Spiritual-sight commands me,
Venus: And heart's-divining mightily announces to me:
Saturn: Lose yourself to find yourself
Verse 44
Sun: Grasping new sense-stimuli
Moon: Fills mental clarity
Mars: Mindful of Spirit-birth completed,
Mercury: Confused sprouting
Jupiter: Becoming of worlds
Venus: Through the creative will
Saturn: Of my thinking.
Verse 10
Sun: To summer heights
Rise, O shining beings, to the sun;
Moon: It takes along my human feelings into space-expanses.
Mars: A sense of foreboding stirs within
Mercury: A feeling now heralds within me,
Jupiter: You will realize one day:
Venus: You are felt
Saturn: By a being of God.
Verse 43
Sun: In wintry depths
Warm the true being of the spirit;
Moon: It gives to the world-appearance
Mars: Through powers of the heart
Mercury: Essential mighty forces;
Jupiter: Defying the cold world
Venus: The soul-fire
Saturn: Deep within the human being.
Verse 11
Sun: It is in this hour of the Sun
Moon: For you to recognize wise tidings:
Mars: Surrendered to the Cosmic beauty
Mercury: Living through you,
Jupiter: Feeling you:
Venus: The human ego can lose itself
Saturn: And find itself in Cosmic-Self.
Verse 42
Sun: It is in this darkness of winter
Moon: The revelation of one's own power
Mars: The soul's strong drive,
Mercury: To guide itself into darkness
Jupiter: And to presciently feel
Venus: Through heart-warmth
Saturn: Senses' revelation.
Verse 12
Sun: Beautiful cosmic radiance
Moon: Compels me from depths of soul
Mars: Divine powers of independent existence
Mercury: To release to cosmic flight;
Jupiter: To leave myself
Venus: Trusting only my own seeking
Saturn: In cosmic light and cosmic warmth.
Verse 41
Sun: The soul's creative power
Moon: Strives from depths of heart,
Mars: Divine powers in human life
Mercury: To kindle to right action,
Jupiter: Shaping itself
Venus: In human love
Saturn: And in human deeds.