liturgy of the seasons (28)

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.

TWENTY-EIGHTH WEEK OF THE YEAR

28. Ich kann im Innern neu belebt
Erfühlen eignen Wesens Weiten
Und krafterfüllt Gedankenstrahlen
Aus Seelensonnenmacht
Den Lebensrätseln lösend spenden,
Erfüllung manchem Wunsche leihen,
Dem Hoffnung schon die Schwingen lähmte.

∇∆

I FEEL rekindled from within
the inner Sun of self-experience
raying forth on floods of thought
floods that bear the soul’s true light
limning cosmic riddles in the night
fulfilling yearnings long forgot
whose wings my idle hope had crippled

Photo by Isaac Wendland on Unsplash