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The Sun Archive

A Resource for Spiritual Research

The Sun Archive A Resource for Spiritual ResearchThe Sun Archive A Resource for Spiritual ResearchThe Sun Archive A Resource for Spiritual Research
  • Home
  • Articles & Topics
    • Archangels & Astrosophy
    • Christ & Opposing Powers
    • On Colors and Auras
    • The Cycles of the Year
    • On Dreams
    • On Forgiveness
    • Founders of Anthroposophy
    • Heracles, Son of the Sun
    • Initiates & Bodhisattvas
    • Karma and Reincarnation
    • Lost Poet's Society
    • Meditations & Verses
    • Messengers
    • The Mystery of Death
    • The Near-Death Experience
    • The Oracle of Delphi
    • Quotes to Live By
    • 7 Aspects of Human Being
    • The Spiritual Hierarchy
  • Free Books and Works
    • Free Books & Works
    • Joan of Arc, 2022
  • Links
    • Links
  • Contact

The Cycles of the Year

Rudolf Steiner brought forth many meditations that reflect the changing seasons, as soul moods, of the year that can be used to bring one into balance as our disposition changes in relation to the seasons. These mantras, thoughts, and meditations are connected to the influences of the zodiac throughout the year.


These 12 meditations, as moods, can be used in correlation with "The Calendar of the Soul" by Dr. Rudolf Steiner that provides weekly meditations for the entire year. There are several translations of this work in print.


Quotes below are from the book "The Virtues, the Seasons of the Soul" by Herbert Witzenmann which is available as a free download on this website on the Articles and Free Works page. 


The 12 Virtues can be found in Rudolf Steiner's works including Soul Exercises: Word and Symbol Meditations, 1903–1924 (CW 267), The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner.  Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Exercises-Meditations-Collected-Steiner/dp/088010628X


Days of the Week: https://www.rsarchive.org/DoW/\


Calendar of the Soul (one of several translations available): https://rsarchive.org/Articles/GA040/English/AP1982/GA040_index.html

January

February

February

Sign: Capricorn 

Dates: December 22 - January 19

Virtue: Courage

Meditation: Courage Becomes Redemptive Power

Quote: "No beginning without courage, no courage without truth."


"The source of true courage is a soul event that integrates the past and the future for truth and is not restricted by time." 


"Courage leads one to a sense and recognition of destiny and the future which is paved by the world of outer events that serve as reminders and signposts on the pathway of immortality."

February

February

February

 Sign: Aquarius
Dates: January 20 - February 19
Virtue: Discretion
Meditation: Discretion Becomes Meditative Power

Quote: "Silence is the protection which keeps the spiritual as an inviolable secret of the soul."


"I am a thought which is brought about by the hierarchies of the cosmos."

March

February

March

 Sign: Pisces
Dates: February 19 - March 20
Virtue: Magnanimity
Meditation: Magnanimity Becomes Love

Quote: "Keeping silent (as in meditation and control of one's thoughts and feelings) allows the voice of the spirit to be heard as the voice of one's own true being. This hearing is the sense of individuality (and thus magnanimity)."

April

April

March

 Sign: Aries
Dates: March 21 - April 20
Virtue: Devotion
Meditation: Devotion Becomes the Power of Sacrifice

Quote: "The love which bears responsibility for every individual and so feels it is a member of a free community is dedication (devotion)."

May

April

June

 Sign: Taurus
Dates: April 21 - May 20
Virtue: Equilibrium
Meditation: Equilibrium Becomes Progress

Quote: "The sacrificial force of dedication which feels freedom as community becomes the experience of balance."

June

April

June

 Sign: Gemini
Dates: May 21 - June 20
Virtue: Steadfastness & Perseverance
Meditation: Steadfastness & Perseverance Becomes Faithfulness

Quote: "Balance experienced as progress is perseverance." 


"Faithful is he(or she) who, by working ceaselessly to make something of himself, fulfills what he owes to the world and the people linked with him by destiny."

July

September

August

 Sign: Cancer
Dates: June 21 - July 22
Virtue: Selflessness
Meditation: Selflessness Becomes Catharsis

Abridged Quote: "Faithful perseverance is selfless. Selflessness becomes self-purification which then becomes catharsis. Catharsis is achieved by transforming the dangers which threaten the center of balance."

August

September

August

 Sign: Leo
Dates: July 23 - August 22

 Virtue: Compassion
Meditation: Compassion Becomes Freedom

Abridged Quote: "Such purified selflessness becomes compassion. Compassion is the sheath upon which the free heart beats."


 "Through compassion, we release the true higher aspects in each person that we meet even if it is hidden in one's lower nature.  Spiritual union can only be achieved through true compassion which seeks neither to dominate or flee from one we meet. Thus, true compassion creates true spiritual union (not in a corporeal sense) and not only makes us free, but frees all whom we meet." 

September

September

September

 Sign: Virgo
Dates: August 23 - Sept. 22
Virtue: Courtesy
Meditation: Compassion That Becomes Freedom Restores to Courtesy its Deeper Meaning

Abridged Quote: "Compassion which becomes freedom restores courtesy its meaning and dignity. True courtesy is free union with the higher being of one whom we meet. It experiences not only itself in the higher being of the one it meets, but this higher being also in itself. It holds aloof from a behavior which disavows its own better nature. Thus it becomes heart's tact.


Courtesy and tact of heart relate to one another as systole and diastole."

October

November

September

 Sign: Libra
Dates: September 23 - October 22
Virtue: Contentment
Meditation: Courtesy Becomes Composure

Abridged Quote: "Courtesy and tact springing from the heart becomes contentment that desires nothing for itself."


"To Live in pure trust with the certainty of the ever-present help of the spiritual worlds."

November

November

November

 Sign: Scorpio
Dates: October 23 - November 22

 Virtue: Composure
Meditation: Composure Becomes Insight

Abridged Quote: "Composure becomes patience. Patience, when combined with willpower, becomes wisdom."


"Excessive patience without thoughtful action is idleness. Thoughtless action without patience and discernment is intemperance."


"Only deeds that are reexamined each and every time, based on the pillars of wisdom and willpower, leads to genuine and right action."

December

November

November

 Sign: Sagittarius
Dates: November 23 - December 21
Virtue: Control of Speech and Thoughts
Meditation: Insight & Discernment Leads to Truth

Abridged Quote: "Discerning patience controls the tongue. Whoever speaks or judges hastily hinders the maturing process which brings the truth of the world spirit to forward. Control becomes a sense and feeling of truth."


"When a human being gains knowledge for himself, his self becomes for him the world. When a human being gains knowledge of the world, the world becomes for him the self."

Selected Quotes from Dr. Rudolf Steiner

(1)  "When we study the threefold human form in its relation to the Cosmos, we can say that man is shaped and moulded by cosmic forces but these  forces work upon him in many different ways. The changing position of the Sun in the zodiacal constellations through the various epochs has  been taken as an indication of the different forces which pour down to  man from the world of the fixed stars." -Rudolf Steiner,  Cosmic Forces in Man, GA 209, 1. Cosmic Forces in Man, https://rsarchive.org/Search.php?q=constellation&type=keywords 


(2) "...the changes on the earth are closely connected with certain constellations of the stars. This is a most significant fact. At the beginning of spring the sun rises in a certain zodiacal constellation. The sun began to rise in the constellation of Aries (the Ram) 800 years before Christ; before that epoch it rose in the adjacent constellation of Taurus (the Bull). About 2,600 years are required for the passage through one constellation. The circuit through the whole twelve constellations is known in occultism as a Cosmic Year."  -Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, GA 99, V. Man's Communal Life Between Death and a New Birth. Birth into the Physical World. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA099/English/RSP1966/19070529p01.html


(3) "... all astrological Mysteries in ancient time were in reality Mysteries of  Light, — in the times, I mean, before the arrival of the Mystery of Golgotha. Only, here again we must remember that the ancient Astrology  was not pursued with the abstract calculations of to-day, but with an  atavistic clairvoyant power. Man did not merely observe the  mineral-physical world of stars above him; in those most ancient times,  he had an organ with which to behold the secret of the constellations.  It was, especially, a customary art in certain Mysteries of olden time,  to observe the Moon establishing its various positions through the  constellations of the Zodiac...


Likewise the other planets in their several constellations were brought home to the consciousness of men... 


They knew, moreover, that the Mystery of human death is connected with what is thus spoken to man by the starry constellations.  Throughout the ever-changing association of the fixed stars with the  several planets, they saw the expression, as it were, of a language  which he who sojourns in the body hears from the Earth, while at the  same time the souls of the dead perceive it from the other side. They  were clearly conscious of the fact that when a man gives himself up with  devotion to the language of the stars, he lives in that element which  receives the human being when he passes through the Gate of Death."  -Rudolf Steiner, On the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Times, GA 180, III. Realities Beyond Birth and Death https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA180/English/AM1929/19171229p01.html *This is an abridged quote.

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