The Twelve Moods of the Zodiac
In Leo, we emerge from the emotional purification of Cancer with a new heart-felt sense of compassion. This compassion becomes freedom. Focus is on the rhythmic system in the upper interior of the human body. The activity of our inner organs is deeply connected to the external world. The rhythms of the universe resound through the life-filled body through the presence of the Lion—Life itself. Rudolf Steiner informs us the mood of Leo is "toward the firm resolve to be."
In the calendar year, it is a time of ripening and fructification. The Spirit rises and in the darkness, light is born and lives in us. Now at the time of the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ, we contemplate the initiation of His most advanced disciples, James, Peter and John. One might also recall the conversion of Saul to Christianity and his life as Paul the evangelist. Are we willing to answer the call to transform ourselves and "arise with senses' might"?
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