Rudolf Steiner on the Virtues

Notes to the First German Edition from 1972

Herbert Witzenmann

The studies on the Virtues owe their origin to a cordial invitation. They were first published in the Star Calendar for the year Easter 1969 to Easter 1970 (Philosophic-Anthroposophic Press, Dornach 1968). They are printed in this [German] edition for the second time in an almost unaltered form. The first edition included a preface, which has been replaced by a new introduction on the origin of the Virtues. The previous preface with the title “Rudolf Steiner on the Virtues” is included below in its entirety. It contains certain explanations which could be useful for the reader.

"Rudolf Steiner has attributed twelve Virtues to the cycle of the year. The meditative nature of this arrangement becomes already evident from the fact that conceptually designated attributes are not linked to  certain dates or periods. It is rather a matter of twelve soul motions, twelve inner steps that can be taken in line with the course of the year.  These indications begin therefore with: “Until January 21 – Courage becomes redemptive power; Until February 21 – Discretion becomes meditative power,” and end with: “Until December 21 – Control of the tongue (speech) becomes feeling for truth”.  The period of inner transformation lasts in each case from the twenty-first day of a month to the twenty-first day of the following month.  Virtues are consequently not character traits that one simply possesses or acquires, but exertions, conquests and enhancements. Rudolf Steiner, as can be seen, does not list a classification of the Virtues, but presents the dynamics of shaping our own Virtues engendering being. Virtues are transitions, examples of pathseeking and pathfinding.

The inner path is the constantly moving mean between a bodily free condition and resurrection towards a spirit-enamored state of being. Virtues are stages of the constant struggle to achieve the midway between aberrations. As witnesses to such a midway experience, they are not described by Rudolf Steiner as achievements but as progressions. They are the reflective awareness between remembrance of the descent of the spirit and premonition of its goal. It is the motion of pathfinding, which yet is quietude, because it ensures the right direction through truth and inner life.

By offering a meditation appropriate to each successive step on this path, an attempt was made to do justice to this dynamic experience of the Virtues. Almost all these meditations rely directly or indirectly on indications given by Rudolf Steiner Since they are intended as suggestions, they can only serve as a kind of introduction to such meditations, which correspond better to the individual living situation and experience."

Sources

For these suggestions, the following sources were used:

January: For the meditation on interrelations of destiny, see the relevant descriptions by Rudolf Steiner in his books Theosophy and Occult Science – An Outline.

February: The meditation on silence was taken from the cycle of lectures by Rudolf Steiner, Human and Cosmic Thought, Berlin 1914.

March: Concerning the meditations on magnanimity suggested here, the Defenses (German: Rettingen) by the German philosopher and writer Lessing may be called to mind. Lessing established with this work a new literary genre which, to be sure, has produced no successors, probably because no later author might lay claim to matching his combination of magnanimity and originality of thought. Lessing characterized his Defenses (in the preface to the third and fourth parts of his Works) with the following words: “And whom does one think that I have defended? None but dead men who cannot thank me for it. And against whom? Almost solely against the living, who will perhaps draw a sour face at me for doing so. If that is clever, I do not know what it is to be called rash.”

The more modestly Lessing might belittle his own cleverness in this respect, the more his noble relationship to truth deserves unreserved admiration. Lessing’s Defenses are a glorious testimony to his love for creative individuality and his contempt of philistinism, which assumes that an injustice is annuled in the course of time. Surely no time span, and even if it claims the extent of centuries, can exempt the next generations from nobility of soul and human dignity, nor exonerate them from looking back over injustice committed in the past and letting it point to a direction for a preview of their future action, or relieve them of taking steps that lay their own personality on the balance of justice. Especially not if the consequences of injustice continue to exist and have effect, exposing uniqueness of the caviling of the perpetually out-of-date, the conspiracy of the mediocre, and the mercilessness of those masking the shame caused in them by greatness behind their hate.

April: Lalitawistara, Ch. II; Luke, Ch. 2, 41 ff.

May: Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child from the Aspect of Spiritual Science, The Spirtual Guidance of Man and Mankind.

June: Rudolf Steiner, The Christ Impulse in Temporality and Its Effect in Man, Pforzheim, 1918.

July: John, Ch. 14, 6.

August: Syngignoskeim “Cognizing” is what the ancient Greek called forgiving.

September: Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom), Ch. 14.

October: Rudolf Steiner, “This is what we must learn in our time, to live in pure trust without any existential security, trusting in the ever-present help from the spiritual world.”(froma lecture in 1919).

November: Apocalypse, Ch. 10.

December: Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, December 24, 1918, supplement to the Calender of the Soul. Rudolf Steiner gave various versions of the same content, for example (in Anthroposophical Teachings, Dornach, March 30, 1924):

If you desire to know your own being,

Look round at the whole world from every side.

If you truly wish to comprehend the world,

Look into the depths of your own soul.