Calendar of the soul Eloise Krivosheia & Roberta van Schilfgaarde
This week the soul begins by feeling a self-likeness with Mother Nature; recognizing that as Nature’s will forces brought to burgeoning life the glorious bloom and maturity of spring and summer, the soul carries its own will forces that can give birth to a new Sense of Self, capable of bearing the higher Self. Week 26:
O Nature, your maternal being
I bear within the essence of my will,
And my own will's dynamic fiery power,
It steels my spirit’s driving forces
That they give birth to a Sense of Self
To bear my Self in me.
With the Autumn meteor showers, we become aware of how the Archangel Michael’s gift of cosmic iron is in our spirit impulses, and we know that the fire in our will can turn this iron into strong, supple steel for the mighty tasks for which the world is crying out.
Michael, fiery “thought-prince of the universe,” Spirit of our Time, leaves us free to follow his leadership to our higher ego, or not, but the goal is a new understanding of our fellow beings in a brotherly way –replacing egotism and leading to a new sense of social harmony and community development.
Of the four festivals of the year as they are connected with the Solstices and the Equinoxes, Michaelmas stands apart. The others tell of spiritual events: the birth of Jesus, the Mystery of Golgotha and the birth of John the Baptist. But Michaelmas must be a new festival, established in a great and worthy way out of the Spirit, involving scientific, religious, and artistic experiences, and implying a great deal of insight into our inner nature.
I’ve always thought the Calendar of the Soul verses are written out of the etheric, and like flowing water, they simply flow by us and so need to be recreated. Steiner has given the verses in a new language, a Michaelic language, which can be known by the fact that the verses call forth hardly any mental picture which can be remembered, but only conceptual images of thought which must be newly created each time. It is a language of light, which comes to life only through re-creation. Through the missing of mental pictures which can be remembered, this language is transparent for the living, as well as for those who have died.
