“The year has its own cycle of life. The human soul can follow in feeling this life of the year. And if the soul opens herself to the influences that thus speak to her week by week, this life with the year will lead her to a real finding of herself. She will feel powers growing up within her, that lend her new strength from within. She will see that such latent powers in herself need to be aroused by the interest that she brings to the world into which she has been born.
In this Calendar there is set down for each week a verse, suited to awake in the soul a fellow-consciousness of what is going on during this particular week of the whole cycle of world-life. The verse is intended to express the note sounded in the soul when she puts herself in unison with this moving life of the world. A healthy feeling of “at oneness” with the course of nature, and, arising thence, a vigorous “finding of oneself,” this is what is here intended, in the belief that, for the soul, some such inner accompaniment of the world’s path, as pursued in these verses, is a thing for which she harbours the longing, if she but rightly understand herself.”
—Translation of the Preface of The Calendar of the Soul, GA 40, by Mabel M. Cotterell, 1948
The relationship between Michaelmas and the Calendar of the Soul is beautifully described in the lecture GA223 of which an excerpt appears above.
Here are two recorded talks given by Richard Steel to the Chicago branch of the Anthroposophical Society, USA that explore this relationship, and Calendar of the Soul drawings.
About Richard Steel
CEO of the Karl König Institute, was born in Oxford, England and moved to Camphill in Germany in 1972. After completing the Camphill Seminar for Curative Education, Richard lived with his family and worked in community with young people with disabilities for 36 years. He founded the Karl König Institute in 2008, with the aim of making König’s healing impulses widely available for the world today. To meet this purpose, Richard lectures and teaches in Europe, Great Britain and Scandinavia. And he has edited and published new editions of Karl König’s written works in English and German, now 24 volumes. Inspired by both Rudolf Steiner and Karl König. Richard has lived deeply with the Calendar of the Soul over five decades. He gave a yearlong series of 52 English talks on the Calendar and König’s drawings, now available in German, Chinese and soon Italian. Richard’s new English translation of the Soul Calendar verses has been published.
Michaelmas and the Calendar of the Soul – Soul Breathing and World Breathing – by Richard Steel :
The Calendar of the Soul and Karl König’s Drawings – by Richard Steel :
