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Keeping the Light Alive!

Monthly articles demonstrating Rudolf Steiner’s  relevance to today’s world

Adrian Anderson Ph. D., author of books and articles on anthroposophy

February 2017: Exploring Virgo in Rudolf Steiner's lost zodiac,

Last year I announced the publication of my book presenting my re-creation of Rudolf Steiner’s great Stuttgart zodiac, painted in 1912 but destroyed in 1937. Now we shall explore the image for Virgo.
 

The symbol for the Virgo phase in the Stuttgart ceiling is quite striking. In this painting, we see a cloud-like surrounding, inside of which is a simple outline of a feminine figure who has a cosmic quality, for around her is a radiant aura, but raying out in twelve areas. She is holding what appears to be either a dove, or a sun-like object. This image represents the Virgoan phase of humanity’s evolution; it started about 15,000 BC and ends about AD 8000, when the Post-Atlantean Large Epoch ends. The Spiritual-self state of consciousness is indicated in the image by the surrounding radiant zodiacal glow. Such a feature indicates that humanity’s consciousness is now starting once again to perceive the spiritual, which imbues the cosmos with a supernal radiance.

The clairvoyant, enlightened Spiritual-self consciousness, is the same as what the Hellenistic people called the ‘Sophia’ state. Rudolf Steiner explains that the term “Sophia’ in anthroposophical wisdom refers to the Spiritual-self. He explains that the reason that the Greeks chose this feminine term, is “the earlier initiates noticed how cosmic energies streamed into the pure newly formed Spirit-self, (a feminine dynamic}…and hence they gave a feminine name to this fifth part of the human being ….”. In other words, with the clairvoyance of the Spiritual-self state, the acolyte felt his or her soul receiving the in-raying energies of the cosmos, and such a receiving is a feminine dynamic. The image here is a meditation on the kind of spiritualized consciousness that we human beings are intended to achieve during the ‘Virgo” Age.

All the best until March,

Adrian A.