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.
EIGHTEENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR 18. Kann ich die Seele weiten, Dass sie sich Selbst verbindet Empfangnem Welten-Keimesworte? Ich ahne, dass ich Kraft muss finden, Die Seele würdig zu gestalten, Zum Geistes-Kleide sich zu bilden. ∇∆ CAN I allow my soul to dilate that in her compass she enfold, receive the cosmic Word,* in pith and passion? I strain the answer to conceive: I must find the strength to fashion the soul into the spirit’s raiment.
*Greek λóγος, or l ó g o s, often rendered in English as “Word”; cf. John 1.1:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
and Heraclitus:
Though this Word 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, even as they forget what they do in sleep.