Tag Archives: Anthroposophy

Summer Solstice 2022 — Planetary Alignment on St John’s Day

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Reading Time : 4 minutes

The end of spring is a peculiar period of the year. Sunlight gets weird, and the Sun is so high in the sky that it almost feels like it’s not even shining. It is as if it was standing still, precisely as the word Solstice suggests. And in this stillness the Sun seems to call the human soul, almost absorbing it, dragging it with him in the heavenly heights.

It’s this feeling of “being absorbed” that in my opinion makes it difficult for the Soul to say that the Sun is shining out. This is because even though it’s true in a physical sense, the inner experience seems to go in the opposite direction. In a sense, when we look something irradiating we feel pushed away from it. And this is not what I feel, contemplating the midsummer Sun.

ST John’s Wort

We are leaving Gemini, a mutable sign. Traditionally all mutables are considered to be “double signs”. This also applies to Virgo that from a symbolic perspective doesn’t have a double nature at all. Whereas Pisces, Gemini and Sagittarius can clearly be understood as having a double body.

This doubleness refers to the fact that mutable signs transition us from a season to the next. This means that during the month we can experience a mix of the mood and flavor of both. In the case of Gemini in particular, the Twins have two different natures. One of them, Castor, is mortal; his brother Pollux, immortal. We can picture them as a living image of the human being. In fact we all have a mortal garment and an immortal spirit.

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Astrosophy and The Planetary Spheres — The Sublunary Sphere and the Soul World

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Reading Time : 9 minutes

The crescent Moon standing out in the night sky fascinated humanity since ancient times. Its mysterious, pale silver light has always been associated with the milk of the Great Mother. And her relationship with the waters and the tides immediately recalled a feminine imagination.

In a previous post we discussed about the Earth and the Four Ethers as the representatives of the Phsycal-Etheric World. In this article we are going to continue our exploration of the Planetary Spheres. We are going to talk about the Moon in relation to the so called Sublunary Sphere. And we’re also going to introduce the higher reality of the Soul World (or Astral World) as described by Rudolf Steiner.

Sublunary Sphere divided in 4 layers

But before jumping into this topic we need to introduce the concept of the Planetary Spheres. This because from a spiritual perspective a “Planet” is something very different from what in Astronomy usually means. This fundamental misunderstanding brought a lot of confusion concerning the way we view today the ancient conception on the Planets.

So let’s first and foremost introduce this concept that is going to accompany us through out all this series of articles.

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Astrosophy and The Planetary Spheres — The Earth and the Four Ethers

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Reading Time : 9 minutes

“Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the Universe”
—Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts (1924)

One of the goals of Astrosophy is to create a bridge between the world of the stars and the spiritual realities dwelling behind them. Being part of the Anthroposophical current, these efforts definitely fall under Steiner’s definition reported in the opening quote. Indeed, one of the tasks of Anthroposophy as a path of knowledge is to provide an image of the higher worlds—the spiritual realities beyond the world of the senses.

In this regard we want to consider Astrosophy as a complementary discipline to Astrology. The latter studies the dynamic relationships between the stars, providing a traditional wealth of knowledge to observe and identify the Archetypes at play in the physical world. The former deepens the spiritual realities at the very foundation of this tradition.

Vulcano Eruption as a symbol of the Four Elements and Four Ethers

In this series of articles we are going to talk about the three worlds described by Anthroposophy that we sometimes mentioned in previous posts. In particular, we are going to relate them to the planetary spheres in order to have a physical reference for them. This is going to allow us to expand our representations of the traditional astrological planets as well.

So let’s start with the our planet, the Earth, and the Physical World.

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Astrosophy — The Three Zodiacs, Expression of the Same Archetype

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In a previous article we talked about the Platonic Year and how it represents the relationship between the Sidereal Zodiac and the Tropical Zodiac. In this article we are going to add another one to our considerations, for a total of Three Zodiacs. We are also going to see how they relate to each other, highlighting a beautiful symmetry in the relationship between the three of them.

This post is part of a series of articles. Please note that the spirit of this series is to give the different Zodiacs a context. My intention is not to de-legitimize one astrological approach over another. In other words, I’m not saying that you should use one Zodiac—such as the Sidereal for example—rather than the Tropical. On the contrary, we want to abandon any one-sided approach on this matter.

So please consider this article as a contribution, an impulse that goes in the direction of integrating Astrology with an Anthroposophical understanding of the Cosmos.

The Three Zodiacs outlined over a starry background

The Three Zodiacs

At the end of our previous article we presented the following schema. We want to start from there, so check it out if you want to know more about the rationale behind it:

  • The Spiritual World corresponds to the Sidereal Zodiac
  • The Soul World corresponds to the Tropical Zodiac
  • The Physical World corresponds to a third specific Zodiac

So what’s this Third Zodiac? And why would it correspond to the Physical World? With Willi Sucher—pioneer of Astrosophy—I am going to refer to the Astrological Houses as a Third Zodiac (you can check out his book Cosmic Christianity available here for free).

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Astrosophy — The Platonic Year as the Relationship Between the Sidereal and Tropical Zodiac

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Reading Time : 7 minutes

Different astrological traditions have different approaches to Astrology. Among the differences that we can find between them, the main one definitely concerns which is the “right Zodiac” to use. Some of them use the Tropical Zodiac, others the Sidereal.

In general, the dispute tends to polarize the question. The underlying premise is that if one Zodiac “works” the other must be wrong. This one-sided approach usually leads to rejecting one Zodiac in favor of the other. Or to pass from one system to the other as if it were a sort of religious conversion.

In this article we are going to take into account the communications coming from Anthroposophy—the Spiritual Science founded by Rudolf Steiner—in order to find a middle ground. Instead of rejecting one Zodiac or the other, we are going to be looking at a bigger picture in order to understand not only their differences but also where they stand.

In this sense, please note that I’m not taking a side in favor of one system. On the contrary, I invite you to take this post as a humble contribution for deepening the understanding of our cosmos, which in my opinion seems to have enough room for both the Zodiacs.

A starry night reflecting on a mountain lake

Let’s start by noting a very simple fact. We can have a direct experience of both the Zodiacs. On one hand, we can look at the stars at night. They are out there to contemplate, forming the constellations of the Sidereal Zodiac. On the other, we can observe the changes through the seasons as a direct expression of the Tropical Zodiac.

Now, a lot of issues usually come up at this point. Who established the division from one constellation to the other? How can we deal with the reversal of the seasons between the two hemispheres? These are all important questions. But for the sake of the longevity of this article we are not going to tackle them.

Instead, we are just going to observe the two systems in their simplest form to better understand them.

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Lunar Eclipse in Gemini 2020 — The Dragon’s Quicksilver

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Reading Time : 5 minutes

This year we all feel the desire of bringing Christmas forward. We look at the lights and decorations with a certain advance, because we feel surrounded by darkness more than usual. These lights filling the streets are like fairies watching over us in our sleep. We want to have them around.

But in addition to these lights, others are getting closer. Creeping reflections of silver scales are slowly approaching the waxing moon, in the attempt to swallow it. It’s the head of the dragon, Caput Draconis, the North lunar node in Gemini.

As we’ve mentioned earlier, we are going to have a couple of eclipses before the end of the year. On November 30 a Penumbral Lunar Eclipse is going to take place at 8°45’ Gemini, the first eclipse in this sign since 2012.

The second eclipse is going to be way more important, since it’s going to be a Total Solar Eclipse occurring on December 14th at 23°06’ Sagittarius.

Full Moon in Gemini

As we know, a lunar eclipse happens during a full moon. This because the Sun, the Earth and the Moon are properly aligned in this order.

A full moon always counter balances the forces coming from the Sun. The masculine energy of the Sun in Sagittarius finds his counter part in the feminine forces of a full moon in Gemini.

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Sun Enters Sagittarius 2020 — Connection and Belonging in the Time of a Pandemic

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We are living a weird kind of summer here in Italy. It’s called “Estate di San Martino”, Saint Martin’s Summer. This because it’s not unusual to have a mild weather for a couple of weeks in November. But for some reason this year it’s lasting way more than expected, creating a weird time-shift effect.

And it gets even worse. Days are getting shorter and shorter. It gets dark so early that I literally find myself cooking dinner half an hour earlier. And of course lockdowns are back. It’s confusing. We are all confused. And in my opinion we’re going to be even more.

Why is that? Because we are approaching Christmas. The time of the year when we usually start feeling a sort of nostalgia. Darkness grows deeper all around us and we feel the need of connecting with other people. Our need of belonging gets stronger. How are we going to be able to hangout with others during the second wave of the pandemic?

Sun Enters Sagittarius 2020: Northern Lights
PICTURE BY Benjamin Suter FROM Pexels
A creepy mask

Shadow Work Retrospective

As we’ve said in a previous article, last month we expected to deal with the shadow parts of our soul. As you might know, this process of recognizing, processing and integrating back those aspects of us is called Shadow Work, a term inspired by Jungian psychology.

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