liturgy of the seasons (8)

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.

EIGHTH WEEK OF THE YEAR

Es wächst der Sinne Macht
Im Bunde mit der Götter Schaffen,
Sie drückt des Denkens Kraft
Zur Traumes Dumpfheit mir herab.
Wenn göttlich Wesen
Sich meiner Seele einen will,
Muss Menschlich Denken
Im Traumessein sich still bescheiden.

∇∆

THE senses’ scintillating power
enthused in them by working gods,
steals away my thinking’s light
rendering it to wispy stuff of dreams.
the highest beings would withal my soul, unite
then must my own thought, for the hour
resign itself to a mere trancelike plight. 

Photo by Allec Gomes on Unsplash