Dear friends,

I would like today to speak to you about the threshold experience found at the time of transition between autumn and winter, and in turn between the light and dark side of the year. This transition is one which I have lived consciously with for a number of years now through the Celtic calendar.

The process of the turning earth is ever changing yet ever the same. The perennial flowers which brighten our spring and summers each year die down, and reappear again the following year in an explosion of colour, different yet also the same. These cycles are a renewing cycle. In the withering in autumn of the flowers, the force that has held them upright has withdrawn into the earth, and the physical remnants serve as nutrition for the next year’s growth.

The process of this cycle is not only in the flowers, but also in the changing of the forces at play in the rest of the earth. In Anthroposophy the changing face of the planet is marked by the four primary Christian festivals being Christmas, Easter, St. Johns and Michaelmas. Placed upon the image of the year as a wheel the four primary festivals form a cross in the circle.

The four primary Christian festivals mark also our relationship with the heavens as each of these festivals are positioned at or around significant solar alignments, these being Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice and Autumnal Equinox respectively. If one looks at the series of seasonal “Imaginations” offered by Rudolf Steiner, they describe, through an imaginative process the forces at work at each of these major festivals, and by association the season which they fall in. In the Celtic calendar these festivals fall in the middle of each of the seasons and mark the zenith of the forces at work in the earth.

In the Celtic calendar these festivals are complimented by a further four fire festivals placed at midpoints between the four solar/ primary festivals. Thus we are left with an image of an eightfold year as follows:

Each of the fire festivals form literal transitions or thresholds between the seasons. These thresholds are not as pronounced energies as the heightened experience of the primary festivals, and for this reason are often neglected as important times in the years turning.

I find myself conceptualising this eightfold cosmology at the time of Samhain, most commonly celebrated as Halloween. Samhain is a pre Christian festival of the Celtic peoples and forms an important time in the Hibernian mysteries. I consider the mysteries of pre Christian Ireland completely compatible with my Christian impulse. In his explorations of the major mystery schools of history, Dr. Steiner also, after great struggle, penetrated the Hibernian mysteries. Of its exponents, the draoi, Dr. Steiner spoke of Christian men before the incarnation of Christ, preparing the way. These were a wise caste of priests learned both in intellectual knowledge and a knowledge coming from a soul experience of the forces of nature at work. It is from the latter their informed eightfold cosmology of the year descends from, observing not only the heights, but also the subtle and changing forces of the seasons.

The festival of Samhain is called thus as a marking of the end of the samos, or light side of the year. In the Coligny Calendar, an ancient calendar based on Celtic cosmology it is referred to as Trinouxtion Samhani, or the three days of the end of summer. Samhain marks further the Celtic New Year and the rekindling of the sacred fires.

As a threshold experience Samhain marks not only the transition between autumn and winter, but between the two sides of the year, the samos year and the gaimos year. This is a process which is occurring both in ourselves and in the earth. Dr. König places this nicely in context when he gives the potent image of the breathing process of the earth¹, as she is breathing in during the gaimos year, and out during the samos year. This image of the earth as a feminine force has roots in many cultures, from Gaea of the Greeks, Midgard of the Germanic people and Danu in the Irish tradition. Even Dr. Steiner offers us the image of the Earth as Natura.

With the image of the earth as a living and breathing being, and a feminine one at that, we are offered an image of the womb. In the winter the forces of the earth, tired and old, withdraw into the earth, the womb of the Earth and are rejuvenated, transformed and enlivened. So too the physical work of the samos year is taken inwards, and transformed as our inner processes are given expression.

This process is further seen in the point periphery exercise given by Dr. Steiner. In the point periphery exercise Steiner, working from the imaginative perception of projective geometry, takes the symbol of the point in the circle, and how at the point of infinity the point becomes a line, and passing beyond the point of infinity the circle becomes the point, and the point which became a line at infinity begins to curve and become the circle.

So our outer life becomes our inner life, and our inner life our outer. Samhain, in relation to the image of the point periphery, represents neither the samos consciousness, nor the gaimos consciousness. It stands as a time between these two modes, the point of infinity.

The transition between these two modes of consciousness is most eloquently expressed in Verse 30 of Calendar Of The Soul:

This process finds further expression in the following two verses of Calendar.

Looking again to the festival of Samhain, I would feel it pertinent to look at some of the themes found in this time of threshold.

One theme which we meet at this time is an opening of the borders between the spiritual world and this one. Samhain, at the point of infinity has many stories of spirit beings passing into our world. Equally there are many stories tell of heroes of Irish mythology entering the sidhe (hills, believed to be gateways to the otherworld/ spirit world). This lifting of the veil between the two worlds also allowed access to the spiritual experience and knowledge directly, where they had previously only been able to do so through dream and imaginal faculties.

This lifting of the veil also opens to us those who have passed into spirit before us. Samhain, and its later incarnation as Hallows Eve, is a traditional time for remembering and honouring ones ancestors. This is further reflected in the Christian feasts of All Saints and All Souls, covering the proceeding two days. Various traditions exist, among which is the tradition of setting a place for the ancestors at the table on Samhain. This is also sometimes referred to as a seat for Christ.

At the point of infinity there is created a time outside of time. It is a tradition to engage in divination at Samhain. For me, I would see this as an opportunity to step outside the stream of time and look at life. To use an image I frequently visit, picture the span of your life as a silver thread spanning from your birth to your present, at which point it enters your back at the level of the heart, and from the centre of the chest streams forth ahead of you.

To have this image we may look back, but to become too embroiled in the past we can get tangled, both in our past and in our future. To try to race forward into our future, we are snapping the thread of our past, of our processes, and experiences which we need to give purpose and perspective to the path that spans ahead. But to revisit the centre, we have a sense of the supporting hand of the past on our backs, and a streaming forth towards the future. At this threshold of the year it is possible to gain a healthy perspective on ones life direction and gain a conscious understanding of our life processes.

One element of this, and all of the Celtic festivals is the image of the bonfire. In Ireland sacred fires burned at all the sacred centres. At every festival a fire burned brightly. But at Samhain all fires were put out and a new fire was lit at Tlachtgla, a hill named after a woman with spiritual gifts. She stood on the threshold between the spiritual world and our own. From a place named after this woman, an image of the divine feminine, light was carried to all the centres of Ireland, and their fires kindled. At this time of a new year the sacred fires which keep us during the gaimos year are rekindled, rejuvenated, while simultaneously the earth mother breathes inwards in a process of rejuvenating all that lives in nature.

In these times of physical darkness and short days the fire which is lit outwards must be internalised as a spiritual light which lights the domain of the gaimos year, the human soul and its inner processes.

We see this kindling in the Christian observances through the lanterns of St. Martin (the celebrations for which are in places quite similar to those of modern Hallowe’en), and the inbreathing, outbreathing process found in the spiral of light in the Waldorf Advent Garden.

All of this is in preparation for the Light of the World, the Jesus child at Christmas, the time of year with shortest days, after which the light is slowly growing in the belly of the Goddess to be exhaled again at Baltaine.

It is at this time we kindle the inner flame, and look inwards to work with all that this light illumines. It is also our responsibility as members of community to shine this light outwards to our brothers in this time of increasing darkness.

Light in extension.

12/11/06

1. Camphill Correspondence Nevember/ December 2006 Dr. Karl König The Being Of Man And The Festivals Part 1 (May 1932)