liturgy of the seasons (17)

a weekly translation of Rudolf Steiner’s Seelenkalender verse

IN the 1920s, Rudolf Steiner created a sort of liturgy of the natural and spiritual year in the form of fifty-two short verses. Experience—my own and others—testifies to the powerful effect that a short meditation on the relevant verse throughout the course of the year can have in respect to awakening and sensitizing the soul to each season’s unique quality and gesture.

Below is Dr. Steiner’s original Seelenkalender, or “Calendar of the Soul” verse for this week followed by my translation into English. I have opted to follow, whenever a conflict arose, the spirit over the letter in my translation efforts, attempting to convey the “mood” before the propositional content.

SEVENTEENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR

17. Es spricht das Weltenwort,
Das ich durch Sinnestore
In Seelengründe durfte führen:
Erfülle deine Geistestiefen
Mit meinen Weltenweiten,
Zu finden einstens mich in dir.

∇∆

THE cosmic Word* pronounced
is ushered through the portals of my sense
to the soul’s eternal core:
“lade your spirit’s depths and wards,
plenish them with my expanses
and there at once behold
my cosmic being within they soul.”

Photo by Diego PH on Unsplash

*Greek λóγος, or l ó g o s, often rendered in English as “Word”; cf. John 1.1:

In the beginning was the Word (lógos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.¹

and Heraclitus:

Though this Word (lógos) is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For, though all things come to pass in accordance with this Word, men seem as if they had no experience of them, when they make trial of words and deeds such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its kind and showing how it is what it is. But other men know not what they are doing when awake,² even as they forget what they do in sleep.

1

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος, καὶ ὁ Λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος.

2. fragment No. 1:

τοῦ δὲ λόγου τοῦδ ἐόντος ἀεὶ ἀξύνετοι γίνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον· γινομένων γὰρ πάντων κατὰ τὸν λόγον τόνδε ἀπείροισιν ἐοίκασι πειρώμενοι καὶ ἐπέων καὶ ἔργων τοιούτων ὁκοίων ἐγὼ διηγεῦμαι κατὰ φύσιν διαιρέων ἕκαστον καὶ φράζων ὅκως ἔχει· τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους λανθάνει ὁκόσα ἐγερθέντες ποιοῦσιν ὅκωσπερ ὁκόσα εὕδοντες ἐπιλανθάνονται