The fact that January 1st is fixed on the calendar as the first day of the new year is due to the Calendar Reform initiated by Pope Gregory the XIII in 1582. But it took nearly 400 years for this reformed calendar to be used around the world ~ this only came about in the 19teens, when China adopted it.
Around the same time that the Gregorian calendar with its fixed dates became universally accepted, Rudolf Steiner introduced the Calendar of the Soul, which started not with the fixed date rooted in the physical calendar, but with a movable start date determined by the relationship between Sun and Moon and Earth each spring. The Calendar of the Soul demonstrates how, in the life of soul, the human being lives not by fixed structures, but in the weaving rhythms of Sun, Moon, planets, and stars and their harmonious course in relation the seasonal cycles on the Earth. The motivating idea here is that the more abundantly this weaving harmony fills the soul, the more peace and harmony there will be on the Earth ~ and this is never not true, even now.
If you read the Calendar of the Soul verses, you find that the verse for this first week of July addresses ‘spirit kindship,’ which can be imagined as the most noble form of human relationship, in that it lives beyond familial or legal bonds, and while including them, does not diminish but rather enhances them.
What is it in this season and the stars that suggests this, and what’s happening specifically this week that further augments it?
The Sun is moving in the region of Gemini stars, the Twins, which are depicted in classical Greek culture as one mortal and one immortal twin. There is a mood of before and after here, of who we are before we encounter a kindred spirit, and who we become afterward, how we grow. In the traditional symbol of the sign of Gemini there is a rounded line at the top, and a mirroring rounded line at the bottom, further suggesting that when we achieve right relationship below, we mirror what is above.
When considering what might augment this mood of soul this week specifically, it’s worth noting that on Friday, July 4th, the planet Venus will meet Uranus in the morning sky, not far from the star cluster of the Pleiades. If you go out to look, best to plan for an hour or more before sunrise, and to have binoculars ~ it’s not easy to see Uranus with the naked eye, and the day will be dawning.
Pleiades is deeply connected to creation mythologies in most cultures around the world, while Venus is associated with love, and beauty. Uranus was discovered only in the 1700s, way late in the story of humanity. The planet was named after the Greek God of the sky, as the one who governs that which comes forth from space into time. So here we have this dynamic of creation, augmented by love, as an enduring force emerging from space into time ~ at least that’s how I see it, and these are the elements of ‘spirit kinship,’ the kind of relationship and encounter that lives nobly beyond the confines of our temporal definitions.
I like Shakespeare for this, and his Sonnet 116:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
