Rudolf Steiner's beautiful meditative verses for the yearly cycle have been used by countless people over the years. The purpose of this beautiful little book--one you'll treasure for many years--is to awaken one's feelings of nature's cycles and, at the same time, stimulate self-discovery. By listening to the changing language of the year and awakening a profound sympathy for it, we can in turn discover our own individual nature. Steiner's original and unique meditations facilitate this process, leading to a healthy feeling of being at one with the natural world.

This edition features...

"Did Rudolf Steiner dream these things? Did he dream them as they once occurred, at the beginning of all time? They are, for sure, far more astonishing than the demiurges and serpents and bulls found in other cosmogonies.' -- Jorge Luis BorgesRudolf Steiner recorded his view of the world in numerous books. He also gave more than 5,000 lectures, in which he explained his ideas, using only minimal notes. When describing especially difficult subjects, Steiner frequently resorted to illustrating what he was saying with colored chalk on a large blackboard. After his earlier lectures, the drawings...

1 lecture, Dornach, 1924 (CW 236)

"There is the possibility of a comparatively quick maturing of insight into karmic relationships if, for a considerable time, we try patiently, and with inner energy, to picture with greater and greater consciousness an experience which would otherwise simply take its course, without being properly grasped, and fade away in the course of life."

In this unique lecture, Rudolf Steiner presents a practical exercise for understanding karma. He points to the ordinary events of life, encouraging us to take an image of a single event and...

During the early twelfth century, the Knights Templar were established, allegedly, to protect Christian pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. In the process, the knights became famous for their pioneer banking system, crusading zeal, and strict vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty. As membership grew to around 15,000, they came to be seen as a threat by Philippe le Beau of France, who disbanded the group in 1307 and tortured their leaders for confessions of heretical practices. King Philippe accused the order of heresy, sodomy, and blasphemy.

Recent fictional works and popular...

With his philosophical and scientific training, Steiner brought a new systematic discipline to the field of spiritual research, allowing for fully conscious methods and comprehensive results. A natural seer, he cultivated his spiritual vision to a high degree, enabling him to speak with authority on previously veiled mysteries.

Samples of his work are to be found in this book of edited texts, which gathers excerpts from his many talks and writings on various themes and feature editorial introductions, commentary, and notes.

• The Continent of Atlantis
• ...

8 lectures, Dornach, Sep-Oct, 1920 (CW 322)

"We must begin by acquiring the discipline that modern science can teach us. We must school ourselves in this way and then, taking the strict methodology, the scientific discipline we have learned from modern natural science, transcend it, so that we use the same exacting approach to rise into higher regions, thereby extending this methodology to the investigation of entirely different realms as well." --Rudolf Steiner

If only sensory phenomena are within the reach of scientific research, the doors are closed to...

There slumber in every human being faculties by means of which she can acquire for herself a knowledge of higher worlds. Mystics, Gnostics, Theosophists - all speak of a world of soul and spirit which for them is just as real as the world we see with our physical eyes and touch with our physical hands. At every moment the listener may say to herself: that, of which they speak, I too can learn, if I develop within myself certain powers which today still slumber within me. There remains only one question - how to set to work to develop such faculties.

"You will find meditative verses for the individual weeks of the year. You should take these meditations quite particularly into your hearts, for they contain what can make the soul alive and what really corresponds to a living relationship of the soul forces to the forces of the macrocosm." --Rudolf Steiner

Many are familiar with Rudolf Steiner's work The Calendar of the Soul, the book of fifty-two weekly meditative verses that run from Easter to Easter. Few, however, know anything of its history. The form in which it appears today derives from the 1925 edition, which...

It is only of recent times that the truths of occultism have been the subject of public lectures. Formerly, these truths were only revealed in secret societies, to those who had passed through certain degrees of initiation and had sworn to obey the laws of the Order through the whole of their life. Today, man is entering upon a very critical period. Occult truths are beginning to be disclosed to the public. In a matter of twenty years or so, a certain number of them will already be common knowledge. Why is this? The reason is that humanity is entering upon a new phase which it is the object...

23 lectures, various cities, 1911 to 1912 (CW 130)

In addition to the external manifestations of Christianity we know from history, there is another hidden stream of Christian thought and development, sometimes called "esoteric Christianity," or "Rosicrucian Christianity." Showing an intimate knowledge of his subject, Rudolf Steiner brings this once secret, spiritual movement into the light. He does not rely on historical tradition or teachings but, instead, presents wisdom and understanding directly from the metaphysical sources of esoteric Christianity.

In...