The Sun Archive
A Resource for Spiritual Discovery & Inquiry
The Zodiac & Cycles of the Year
.webp)
Rudolf Steiner brought forth many meditations that reflect the changing seasons, as soul moods, of the year that can be used to bring one into balance as our disposition changes in relation to the seasons. These mantras, thoughts, and meditations are connected to the influences of the zodiac throughout the year.
These 12 meditations, as moods, can be used in correlation with "The Calendar of the Soul" by Dr. Rudolf Steiner that provides weekly meditations for the entire year. There are several translations of this work in print.
Quotes below are from the book "The Virtues, the Seasons of the Soul" by Herbert Witzenmann which is available as a free download on this website on the Articles and Free Works page.
The 12 Virtues can be found in Rudolf Steiner's works including Soul Exercises: Word and Symbol Meditations, 1903–1924 (CW 267), The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner. Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Exercises-Meditations-Collected-Steiner/dp/088010628X
Days of the Week: https://www.rsarchive.org/DoW/\
Calendar of the Soul (one of several translations available): https://rsarchive.org/Articles/GA040/English/AP1982/GA040_index.html




Sign: Capricorn
Dates: December 22 - January 19
Virtue: Courage
Meditation: Courage Becomes Redemptive Power
Quote: "No beginning without courage, no courage without truth."
"The source of true courage is a soul event that integrates the past and the future for truth and is not restricted by time."
"Courage leads one to a sense and recognition of destiny and the future which is paved by the world of outer events that serve as reminders and signposts on the pathway of immortality."
Sign: Aquarius
Dates: January 20 - February 19
Virtue: Discretion Meditation: Discretion Becomes Meditative Power
​
Quote: "Silence is the protection which keeps the spiritual as an inviolable secret of the soul."
"I am a thought which is brought about by the hierarchies of the cosmos."
Sign: Pisces
Dates: February 19 - March 20
Virtue: Magnanimity
Meditation: Magnanimity Becomes Love
​
Quote: "Keeping silent (as in meditation and control of one's thoughts and feelings) allows the voice of the spirit to be heard as the voice of one's own true being. This hearing is the sense of individuality (and thus magnanimity)."




Sign: Aries
Dates: March 21 - April 20
Virtue: Devotion
Meditation: Devotion Becomes the Power of Sacrifice
​
Quote: "The love which bears responsibility for every individual and so feels it is a member of a free community is dedication (devotion)."
Sign: Taurus
Dates: April 21 - May 20
Virtue: Equilibrium
Meditation: Equilibrium Becomes Progress
​
Quote: "The sacrificial force of dedication which feels freedom as community becomes the experience of balance."
Sign: Gemini
Dates: May 21 - June 20
Virtue: Steadfastness & Perseverance
Meditation: Steadfastness & Perseverance Becomes Faithfulness
​
Quote: "Balance experienced as progress is perseverance."
"Faithful is he(or she) who, by working ceaselessly to make something of himself, fulfills what he owes to the world and the people linked with him by destiny."

Sign: Cancer
Dates: June 21 - July 22
Virtue: Selflessness
Meditation: Selflessness Becomes Catharsis
​
Abridged Quote: "Faithful perseverance is selfless. Selflessness becomes self-purification which then becomes catharsis. Catharsis is achieved by transforming the dangers which threaten the center of balance."

Sign: Leo
Dates: July 23 - August 22
Virtue: Compassion
Meditation: Compassion Becomes Freedom
​
Abridged Quote: "...purified selflessness becomes compassion. Compassion is the sheath upon which the free heart beats."
"Through compassion, we release the true higher aspects in each person that we meet even if it is hidden in one's lower nature. Spiritual union can only be achieved through true compassion which seeks neither to dominate or flee from one we meet. Thus, true compassion creates true spiritual union (not in a corporeal sense) and not only makes us free, but frees all whom we meet."

Sign: Virgo
Dates: August 23 - Sept. 22
Virtue: Courtesy
Meditation: Compassion That Becomes Freedom Restores to Courtesy its Deeper Meaning
​
Abridged Quote: "Compassion which becomes freedom restores courtesy its meaning and dignity. True courtesy is free union with the higher being of one whom we meet. It experiences not only itself in the higher being of the one it meets, but this higher being also in itself. It holds aloof from a behavior which disavows its own better nature. Thus it becomes heart's tact.
Courtesy and tact of heart relate to one another as systole and diastole."



Sign: Libra
Dates: September 23 - October 22 Virtue: Contentment
Meditation: Courtesy Becomes Composure
​
Abridged Quote: "Courtesy and tact springing from the heart becomes contentment that desires nothing for itself."
"To Live in pure trust with the certainty of the ever-present help of the spiritual worlds."
Sign: Scorpio
Dates: October 23 - November 22
Virtue: Composure
Meditation: Composure Becomes Insight
​
Abridged Quote: "Composure becomes patience. Patience, when combined with willpower, becomes wisdom."
"Excessive patience without thoughtful action is idleness. Thoughtless action without patience and discernment is intemperance."
"Only deeds that are reexamined each and every time, based on the pillars of wisdom and willpower, leads to genuine and right action."
Sign: Sagittarius
Dates: November 23 - December 21 Virtue: Control of Speech and Thoughts Meditation: Insight & Discernment Leads to Truth
​
Abridged Quote: "Discerning patience controls the tongue. Whoever speaks or judges hastily hinders the maturing process which brings the truth of the world spirit to forward. Control becomes a sense and feeling of truth."
"When a human being gains knowledge for himself, his self becomes for him the world. When a human being gains knowledge of the world, the world becomes for him the self."
Selected Quotes from Dr. Rudolf Steiner
(1) "When we study the threefold human form in its relation to the Cosmos, we can say that man is shaped and moulded by cosmic forces but these forces work upon him in many different ways. The changing position of the Sun in the zodiacal constellations through the various epochs has been taken as an indication of the different forces which pour down to man from the world of the fixed stars." -Rudolf Steiner, Cosmic Forces in Man, GA 209, 1. Cosmic Forces in Man
​
​
(2) "...the changes on the earth are closely connected with certain constellations of the stars. This is a most significant fact. At the beginning of spring the sun rises in a certain zodiacal constellation. The sun began to rise in the constellation of Aries (the Ram) 800 years before Christ; before that epoch it rose in the adjacent constellation of Taurus (the Bull). About 2,600 years are required for the passage through one constellation. The circuit through the whole twelve constellations is known in occultism as a Cosmic Year." -Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, GA 99, V. Man's Communal Life Between Death and a New Birth. Birth into the Physical World. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA099/English/RSP1966/19070529p01.html
​
(3) "... all astrological Mysteries in ancient time were in reality Mysteries of Light, — in the times, I mean, before the arrival of the Mystery of Golgotha. Only, here again we must remember that the ancient Astrology was not pursued with the abstract calculations of to-day, but with an atavistic clairvoyant power. Man did not merely observe the mineral-physical world of stars above him; in those most ancient times, he had an organ with which to behold the secret of the constellations. It was, especially, a customary art in certain Mysteries of olden time, to observe the Moon establishing its various positions through the constellations of the Zodiac...
Likewise the other planets in their several constellations were brought home to the consciousness of men...
They knew, moreover, that the Mystery of human death is connected with what is thus spoken to man by the starry constellations. Throughout the ever-changing association of the fixed stars with the several planets, they saw the expression, as it were, of a language which he who sojourns in the body hears from the Earth, while at the same time the souls of the dead perceive it from the other side. They were clearly conscious of the fact that when a man gives himself up with devotion to the language of the stars, he lives in that element which receives the human being when he passes through the Gate of Death." -Rudolf Steiner, On the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Times, GA 180, III. Realities Beyond Birth and Death https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA180/English/AM1929/19171229p01.html *This is an abridged quote.
​
​
(4) As a rule the ancient rites of initiations were conducted so that the soul-expansion of one Initiate was directed to the macrocosmic secret, say of Capricorn, another to those of Cancer, of the Balance, and so on. I have explained on other occasions that there are twelve different possible ways of expansion into the Macrocosm, and that these are indicated symbolically by the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Anyone attaining initiation through expansion of his soul into the macrocosm, and who does not attain at once to the highest—the Sun initiation—but only to a partial initiation, would have his soul-vision directed to the mysteries connected with some special constellation. -Rudolf Steiner, Excurses on the Gospel of Mark, GA 124, Part III. Excursus, Lecture II, Part III. Excurses - Lecture II - Vol. 124. Excurses on the Gospel of Mark (1937) - Rudolf Steiner Archive