Festivals & the Cycle of the Year
The festivals and the breathing of the earth through the year: the four seasonal archangels Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel, and the cosmic rhythms of the seasons. Part of Thalira's Anthroposophical Glossary of 515 terms, and companion to the in-depth guide Anthroposophy.
The raising of the Christ-being out of the visible world into the earth's cosmic-etheric realm, forty days after Easter, ten before Whitsun.
A cycle of 52 weekly meditative verses Steiner wrote in 1912, each mirroring an inner mood of soul against the changing week of the natural year.
Steiner's heart-meditation for the thirteen Holy Nights, when the Earth has breathed inward and the Christ-Child mystery meets the contemplative soul.
The spring festival of the Resurrection, when, in Steiner's research, Christ's physical body dissolved and the Resurrection Body emerged as humanity's future seed.
In Steiner's cosmic year, the archangel of winter and the moon-forces, the Christmas spirit who guards birth and the soul descending into an earthly body.
The autumn festival of Michael, the Archangelic Sun-Spirit, observed on 29 September as the soul's answer to nature's dying back.
Steiner's archangel of spring and healing, the cosmic physician who carries the Mercury-staff and pours healing forces into the waking earth.
The summer-solstice festival of 24 June when the Earth, in Steiner's reading, has fully out-breathed her soul into the cosmos and the human soul disperses outward toward the stars.
Steiner's picture of the year as one long respiration: the Earth breathes its soul-forces out into the cosmos in summer and draws them wholly back in at midwinter.
Steiner's reading of the four seasons as one breathing-process of a living Earth, which draws its soul-forces inward in winter and breathes them into the cosmos in summer.
Steiner's view that the great Christian festivals are fixed in the solar year as cosmic memory, re-linking human life with the rhythms of the heavens.
Steiner's teaching that four ruling Archangeloi take the seasons in turn: Michael in autumn, Gabriel in winter, Raphael in spring, Uriel in summer.
The cosmic iron of the August meteors that Steiner read as the substance of Michael's sword, raining courage into the blood against fear.
Steiner's autumn picture of the Archangel Michael lifting his sword of meteoric iron above the dragon, read inwardly at Michaelmas.
The planet's own inner soul-life, a living being whose ensouled forces gather inward in winter and pour out into the cosmos through summer.
Steiner's Easter up-welling: the earth breathes its soul outward and the risen Christ force rises with the sap into the waking plant-world.
High summer's inner warmth-process, when the human being burns gently with sulphur-fire and the soul shines out into the cosmos.
The crystallising, salt-and-carbon forces of deep winter, when the earth draws its life inward, consolidates into one cosmic body, and becomes most inwardly awake.
The point in the year when the earth draws its whole soul-being wholly inward and holds its breath, growing inwardly most awake at the December solstice.
The regent of high summer in Steiner's spiritual year, whose downward gaze reads human deeds against the crystal-order of nature as a cosmic conscience.
The festival of Pentecost in Steiner's reading: the Holy Spirit descends fifty days after Easter, a flame over each disciple, making the Christ Impulse individual.