We should not underestimate the significance it once held for mankind to focus the whole attention during the year on a festival-time. Although in our time the celebration of religious festivals is largely a matter of habit, it was not always so. There were times when people united their consciousness with the course of the year; when, let us say, at the beginning of the year, they felt themselves standing within the course of time in such a way that they said to themselves: “There is such and such a degree of cold or warmth now; there are certain relationships among the other weather conditions, certain relationships also between the growth or non-growth in plants or animals.”—People experienced along with Nature the gradual changes and metamorphoses she went through. But they shared this experience with Nature in such a way—when their consciousness was united with the natural phenomena—that they oriented this consciousness toward a specific festival. Let us say, at the beginning of the year, through the various feeling perceptions associated with the passing of winter, the consciousness was directed toward the Easter time, or in the fall, with the fading away of life, toward Christmas. Then men’s souls were filled with feelings which found expression in the way they related themselves to what the festivals meant to them.
Thus people partook in the course of the year, and this participation meant for the most part permeating with spirit not only what they saw and heard around them but what they experienced with their whole human being. They experienced the course of the year as an organic life process, just as in the human being when he is a child we relate the utterances of the childish soul with the awkward movements of a child, or its imperfect way of speaking. As we connect specific soul-experiences with the change of teeth, other soul experiences with the later bodily changes, so men once saw the ruling and weaving of the spiritual in the successive changes of outer nature, in growth and decline, or in a waxing followed by a waning.”
Rudolf Steiner, 2 April 1923, Dornach
The Cycle of the Year as a Breathing Process, Lecture 3
GA 223
People must learn once more to “think” the spiritual “together with” the course of nature. It is not admissible today for a person merely to indulge in esoteric speculations; it is necessary today to be able once again to do the esoteric. But people will be able to do this only when they can conceive their thoughts so concretely, so livingly that they don’t withdraw from everything that is going on around them when they think, but rather that they think with the course of events: “think together with” the fading of the leaves, with the ripening of the fruits, in a Michaelic way, just as at Easter one knows how to think with the sprouting, springing, blossoming plants and flowers.
When it is understood how to think with the course of the year, then forces will intermingle with the thoughts that will let men again hold a dialogue with the divine spiritual powers revealing themselves from the stars. Men have drawn down from the stars the power to establish festivals which have an inner human validity. Festivals must be founded out of inner esoteric force. Then from the dialogue with the fading, ripening plants, with the dying Earth, by finding the right inward festival mood, men will also again be able to hold converse with the Gods and link human existence with divine existence.”
Rudolf Steiner, 1 April 1923, Dornach
The Cycle of the Year as a Breathing Process, Lecture 2
GA 223
Thus we see that our present-day consciousness has been acquired at the cost of losing much of the former connection of our consciousness with the cosmos. But once man has come to experience his freedom and his world of thought, then he must emerge again and experience cosmically.
This is what Anthroposophy intends when it speaks of a renewal of the festivals, even of the creating of festivals like the Michael festival in autumn of which we have recently spoken. We must come once more to an inner understanding of what the cycle of the year can mean to man in this connection; it can then be something even loftier than it was for man long ago, as we have described it.”
Rudolf Steiner, 7 April 1923, Dornach
The Cycle of the Year as a Breathing Process, Lecture 4
GA 223
I top loaded this post with three quotes from Cycle of the Year for a very specific reason. Firstly, it is a wonderful lecture series that everyone should read, and these are just a a few snippets. Secondly, there is much discussion happening now about the “Waldorf” festival season and how it should exist in the modern day.
I often hear anthroposophists in and outside of educational settings discussing the merits of holding tight to tradition or allowing the festival season to evolve to meet the needs of community. Arguments for and against each side abound. From my observations, often what each side doesn’t realize is that both arguments hold fast to the words, actions and traditions of each festival, but forget to address the most important aspect.
The impulse. The mood. The message.
Around the world and across cultures, at similar times of the year, festivals are celebrated in connection to the mood and impulse of the natural time of year. They may come from ancient traditions of long ago, from a people who didn’t separate themselves from nature as we do now, but within all of them, across the world, there is a similar impulse. Surely an autumn festival celebrated across the world isn’t negated because it is called something other than Michaelmas.
We have come to a point in the evolution of our consciousness that we have attained the flexibility to choose, in responsible freedom, to take what our ancestors have done and consciously individualize it. This does not mean the festival season is not celebrated, and it does not mean that we can not celebrate the festivals from a Christian standpoint if that serves the needs of the community. What it does mean is that we look at the current time, the current place and the current community, in front of us, and find a way to bring the impulse of the festival year, our connection to the natural cycles of the year, to life.
So we must do the work.
We must learn about not only the celebrations we are accustomed to, but those around the world at similar times of the year.
We must get to the root of the impulse of the season, not from a materialistic view that is connected to past traditions, but from a spiritual view of what is universal.
As we discussed a few weeks back, nothing that is living stays the same.
Is it maybe time to see festivals as living again?
Until next time,
Marina
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