The Twelve Moods of the Zodiac
In Cancer, unselfishness becomes catharsis. It is a time of emotional purification. We focus on the rib cage as an enclosure of the swirling emotions and forces in the heart. Like a crab in its shell, the activity of our inner organs are deeply connected to the external world. The rhythms of the universe resound through the life-filled body. Rudolf Steiner informs us the mood of Cancer is "to meet with vigor each test."
Now at the time of the transfiguration of Jesus, we focus on the initiation of the most advanced disciples, James, Peter and John, and the conversion of Saul to Christianity becoming Paul the evangelist. In the calendar year, it is a time of ripening and fructification. Yet, it is also a time of risk. Will we continue fly too close to the Sun, like Icarus, and melt our wax wings in Luciferic dreaminess? Then, as we turn the corner to the downward procession toward Autumn, will we be careful not to dive too low into materialism and be overtaken by Ahrimanic, worldly forces?
Rudolf Steiner explains:
If you take the mood in Cancer, for example, in which after the ascent there again follows the descent, where one has the feeling that the sun comes to rest for a moment—let us simply use this picture for now; many pictures could be used—there you will be able to feel something from the way in which the words within the Cancer verse are placed.
Rudolf Steiner offers twelve verses of the zodiacal moods revealing the human experience as a reflection of the cosmos. He says, "Thus an attempt has been made to offer a sequence of feeling, sensing, and speaking, which, as it is presented, gives, as it were, another version of the inner soul-feeling in relation to what has flowed into the movements of our solar system. The structure of twelve verses, each with seven lines, corresponds, you could say, to the outer skeleton. If you take this attempt at a twelve/seven-membered poem, however, you will see that what wishes to reveal itself is present in every detail."
Read more about the twelve moods of the zodiac in Rudolf Steiner's Twelve Moods, a lecture given on 29 August 1915 in Dornach.
The Calendar of the Soul Zodiac Signs
The first edition of the Calendar of the Soul (1912) contained reproductions of new zodiacal images made by Imme von Eckardstein according to indications given by Dr Steiner. Rudolf Steiner says of them, "In this Calendar will be found signs that differ from those handed down by tradition, because the latter are no longer suitable for modern consciousness. These pictures of the Zodiacal constellations are representations of actual experiences connected with the waking and sleeping of particular spiritual Beings. We have in these pictures a renewal of certain knowledge that needs to be renewed at the present time, because the third post-Atlantean culture-epoch must as it were rise again in the fifth epoch."
Read more: Rudolf Steiner, The Calendar of the Soul, Volume II, Lecture II, GA 143, 7 May 1912, Cologne