Michaelmas 1901

Michaelmas 1901 saw cosmic beings celebrating the inauguration of a new age – the age of spiritual science. The new age was prepared by the beginning of the new age of Michael in the fall of 1879 and the end of Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, in 1899. Also, earlier that year Steiner completed and published his philosophical studies under the title World and Life Conceptions of the Nineteenth Century . These studies enabled him to see how to speak about his spiritual research. He also found a group of people who wanted to listen to him speak about these experiences.

The cosmic events in that Michaelmas celebration included meetings of every planet with one or more planet elements and other planets. These meetings were associated with a great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation of Gemini near the descending node of Pluto and aphelion of Earth with Venus nearby. Pluto, Uranus, Mars, and Mercury were on or near the apsides line of Mercury and the nodal line of Venus in the constellations of Taurus and Scorpio. Finally, Neptune was near the perihelion of Saturn in the constellation of Gemini. The great conjunction was a descendant of that of 6 BC which Sucher associates with the spiritual nativity of Jesus.

These cosmic and earth events around Michaelmas 1901 mark the dawn of humanity’s breakthrough to the spiritual world. It marks a significant step in the renewal of the mysteries, the restoration of the bridge that once spanned the abyss of materialism. The new bridge being built by the new mysteries is the development of the highest capacities of cognition human beings can attain in the present age. Steiner termed these capacities imagination, inspiration, and intuition. Sucher associates them with the newly discovered planets of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, respectively. The constellations in which the cosmic celebration took place are deeply connected with these potentialities and the opposition that arises when a human being attempts to meet these challenges.

As Steiner and Sucher repeatedly remind us, these potentialities can be realized with the help of Michael and Christ. We have only to make this possible by achieving spiritual freedom through developing our thinking. Steiner describes the contemporary status of thinking in lecture one of Human and Cosmic Thought. He describes the thinking required to access spiritual realities in lecture four. The activated thinking to which he refers does not use the physical brain as does nearly all contemporary ‘thinking’. The thinking that accesses the spiritual world uses the etheric brain. Activated thinking can be developed. Steiner has described how this can be done in various books and lectures. In recent times others have described new developments in human consciousness that appear to lead to this kind of thinking.

The Dark Age

During 1899 Pluto met the ascending node of Venus and Saturn met the descending node of Venus in the constellations of Taurus and Scorpio. This coincided with the end of Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, which began in about 3101 BC. Sucher associates Pluto beings with the highest of the spiritual capacities which man can attain during the present age: intuition. This capacity enables the human being to identify with that which he experiences in his environment. Venus beings work to realize the Christ impulse in the soul and spirit of human beings by making attainment of these highest capacities a goal for human beings. This cosmic event during 1899 prepared the way for a very positive development enabled by the end of the Dark Age. Steiner initiated this development. He offered humanity ways and means to break through the darkness of Kali Yuga to a renewed experience of the light and life of the spirit..

The dark age was prepared by a conjunction of the aphelion of Mars with the perihelion of Venus in the constellation of Cancer. Until then mankind had an instinctive access of a clairvoyant nature to the spiritual world. The meeting of the aphelion of Mars with the perihelion of Venus placed the gentle, contemplative nature of Venus beings who are so deeply connected with the mysteries in constant danger of being attacked by the will of the Mars beings. The Venus beings have the impulse to reunite and reintegrate what Mars beings had to split asunder. They promote man’s spiritual union with the cosmos and nature. The Mars beings seek to free man from this experience and thus lay the basis for realization of self hood. They do this by atomizing man’s relationship to any thing or being in his environment.

The Michael Age

During 1879 the nodes of Venus met the apsides of Mercury in the constellations of Taurus and Scorpio. Also, at that time cosmic intelligence went through a decisive step of further development with the commencement of the age of the archangel Michael. During the month of September that year a number of cosmic events took place seen from the perspective of the Earth.
1. Pluto was traversing a loop in the constellation of Taurus with Mars nearby. They came into exact conjunction on September 22.
2, On September 22 Saturn was traversing a loop in the constellation of Pisces while Venus was in a loop in the opposite constellation of Virgo.
3. On September 22 Jupiter was traversing a loop in the constellation of Aquarius while Uranus and Mercury were opposite in the constellation of Leo.

There were also a number of other events at the moment Mars and Pluto were seen to meet. We identify these events with the aid of a chart for that moment calculated with the sun as origin.
1. Mercury was almost exactly at the perihelion of Venus and the ascending node of Neptune in the constellation of Cancer.
2. Saturn and Mars were near the perihelion of Jupiter in the constellation of Pisces.
3. Neptune was near the aphelion of Pluto and the ascending node of Mars in the constellation of Aries.
4. Uranus was almost exactly at the aphelion of Mars in the constellation of Leo and Jupiter was near the perihelion of Mars in the constellation of Aquarius.
5. Jupiter was near the perihelion of Mars in the constellation of Aquarius.
These cosmic events ushered in the new age of Michael. We celebrate this event each year on September 29.

The archangel Michael is the guardian of cosmic intelligence and its realization in human beings against the anti-forces, Lucifer and Ahriman. Ahriman would lead man away from cosmic intelligence and use it tor materialistic purposes only. The Venus beings would lead mankind to develop the new, Christian mysteries. The Mercury beings would bring the cosmic intelligence to life within human intelligence. Michaelic intelligence can only help a human being who has become a spiritually free being by developing the potential power of his thinking. This is the language of Taurus in the modern age.

To achieve this freedom, man must recognize in his thinking the forces of darkness, of Ahriman, who is seen as the unredeemed aspect of the constellation of Scorpio, the fallen eagle of old with the deadly sting. Michael keeps this dragon underfoot. This is expressed by the 1879 conjunction in Scorpio of the aphelion of Mercury and the descending node of Venus.

Chart Interpretation

The chart interpretation practiced by Sucher strives to become a true astrology as Steiner described it. It requires the highest spiritual capacities of cognition which the human being of the present age can possibly attain. Sucher demonstrates that much progress towards this goal is possible. As he says, with persistent study and practice one can grow into a kind of perception which comes close to what one may very cautiously call an intuitive awareness. One then sees that the sublime nature of a true astrology should not be misused for superficial, insincere, and dilettante purposes. Instead, it should be a helping hand for profound spiritual research and accomplishment as a vocation of humanity and not as a profession. We illustrate how Sucher approaches this problem in a review of some cosmic and earth events at the turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth.

On earth, Rudolf Steiner solved his problem of how to speak about his researches in the spiritual world. He had worked on this problem all his life. He learned at an early age not to speak of these experiences for they were not understood or were actually misunderstood. He wondered if he was never to speak of the knowledge he had gained in this way. He found the answer in his studies of philosophy. These results appeared in book form in 1901 under the title World And Life Conditions of the Nineteenth Century. On October 2, 1901 he gave the first of a series of lectures which he published later under the title Christianity As Mystical Fact. These lectures were the first public presentations of the results of his researches in the spiritual world.

These events on earth were preceded and accompanied by a number of cosmic events that indicated the nature of the potentials, capacities, and challenges presented to humanity at that time by the hierarchies of cosmic beings working in the planet spheres. Sucher described these cosmic events as marking significant developments in the evolution of human intelligence and consciousness that Steiner reported in his many books and lectures beginning in the fall of 1901.

The first of these developments was in 1879, the beginning of the current age of the archangel Michael. The second development was in 1899, the end of Kali Yuga, the age of spiritual darkness. The third development was, of course, the beginning of the age of spiritual science. These ages are not well noted in the present cultural age which began around 1413 AD with the emergence of consciousness soul characteristics in human beings.

Prenatal Graph

We use the prenatal graph to estimate what potentialities, capacities, and challenges are incorporated into the life story intended by the incarnating human being. This graph is based on the position of the birth moon relative to the sun. These data are so definitive for the life story that we calculate the positions of the moon and its nodes as accurately as possible for the very moment of the physical birth. We calculate the time of the epoch and of the spiritual nativity based on these birth moon data. The epoch is the moment when a kind of cosmic conception takes place. The descending soul is still residing in the sphere of the moon, not yet connected with the germ of its eventual body, when this happens.

The prenatal graph marks the start of each seven year period in the life story to be. These are the moments when the moon returns to the epoch moon position during the approximately ten returns of the moon during the forming of the embryo. The movements of the planets through the constellation seen geocentrically during the epoch to birth months are plotted in the prenatal seven year period graph. The planet positions in the constellations as well as those of the conjunctions of the planets with the sun reveal the cosmic impulses to be received by the earth and the human being from the constellations during the seven year periods of the life to come.

We use the heliocentric planet positions plotted the same way to determine the meetings of planets and planet elements. These events indicate the influences of planet spheres on the whole earth and thus also on all human beings at that moment. These influences as well as those of the constellations are expected to become active in the human being we study at the age indicated.

Chart System

The new astrology developed by Sucher uses a chart system centered on the geocentric star chart for the moment of the event being considered. This is supplemented by the heliocentric chart for the same moment. The geocentric chart sees the planets as mediators between the constellations and the earth. The heliocentric chart introduces meetings of elements and planets at that same moment. The former relates to a specific location on the earth, the latter to the whole earth. At the moment considered, cosmic energies from beyond the zodiac flow toward the sun through the constellations, into the planet spheres , and onto the earth.

The cosmic energies entering through the constellations bring impulses relating to soul-spirit processes in human beings. These appear as potentialities, capacities, and challenges in the soul life of the human beings involved in the event. The superior planets (saturn, jupiter, and mars) bring these impulses to earth, the inferior planets (venus and mercury) attempt to bring these impulses to life in the deeds of human beings. The planets can be seen by human beings but their spheres and the cosmic beings are invisible.

Sucher opens his book with a detailed description of how to calculate and interpret Kepler’s life story using this chart system. He closes his book with a detailed interpretation of Emerson’s charts. Both these descriptions of his chart system are in the form of a tutorial. We recommend that those who want to apply this chart system work through his tutorials including the many page references he gives in these tutorials.

Contemporary Events

Key to understanding contemporary earth events is to understand how cosmic beings work in our time meaning since 1899 and particularly since 1935. Rudolf Steiner and Willi Sucher describe the epoch that spans the period from 1413 AD to about 3570 AD as a time when human beings make decisions that influence their future lives in extremely important ways. Since 1899 significant changes in the spiritual environment of the earth are taking place in support of these processes

The Battle Ground
The scene of action is human consciousness in which a battle is taking place. The battle is for control of the thinking processes that take place there. Cosmic beings are extraordinarily active in this battle. They work within human consciousness and also within human souls in ways of which many human beings are totally unaware. The new astrology seeks ways to gain insight into how cosmic beings participate in this battle for control of thinking.

As we see it, the battle in a human being is won if that human being takes control of his thinking in full consciousness and thus becomes free of all influences that are external to his consciousness. Steiner describes this state of consciousness in his book Philosophy of Freedom.

Cosmic Participants
In his book Occult Science, An Outline Steiner describes cosmic beings as a hierarchy of beings each of whom performs definite functions in world evolution. They send their forces from their world outside of space into our world which is within space. These forces enter space through the constellations and the planet spheres. Each constellation places its own stamp on these forces as does each planet sphere. The new astrology uses these phenomena to reveal the intentions of cosmic beings in their participation in the battle. Sucher describes many of the ways in which cosmic beings participate in this battle. We hope to describe these results of Sucher’s research in future posts.

How Cosmic Beings Work

Steiner describes how cosmic beings work in his book published in 1909 under the title Geisteswissenschaft im Umriss (the book is available in English under various titles, including Occult Science, An Outline and An Outline Of Esoteric Science). Steiner describes how the various kinds of cosmic beings go about creating the life story of the earth in its various incarnations, starting with what he terms Old Saturn and proceeding through three subsequent incarnations he calls Old Sun, Old Moon, and Earth (the current one). Steiner also describes three future lives of the earth which he calls Future Jupiter, Future Venus, and Vulcan.

Sucher draws extensively on Steiner’s descriptions of how cosmic beings work, what they intend, and how they evolve in the course of their work. Sucher has added results of his own researches obtained as he developed the new astrology following Steiner’s indications. We are attempting to present all this in a form that can help others to follow in Sucher’s footsteps, so to speak. Our guide in this task is Sucher’s major publication Practical Approaches Towards A New Astrosophy. We use names and symbols that are customary in describing astronomical events as pointers to the beings associated with the designated astronomical object.

Cosmic Beings

Cosmic Beings
The cosmic beings of the new astrology are those associated with the twelve constellations of the zodiac and the nine planets of our solar system. A tenth kind of cosmic being is associated with the earth’s moon. Each category of beings has its particular role to play in the evolution of the cosmos with their influence on earth processes, natural and human. At moments when planets and elements meet each other, the whole earth receives cosmic forces that result from the meeting. We calculate such moments with the aid of heliocentric coordinates.

The effect of cosmic forces on the incarnation processes of a human being are estimated in the new astrology with the aid of geocentric charts showing the movements of the planets during the gestation period. These charts relate to a specific place on the earth and a specific time. The incarnation processes include the formation of the physical and etheric (life) bodies and the formation of the life story under the influence of the intentions formed during the life between earth incarnations. These intentions are formed within the limitations set by karma, including personal karma, humanity karma, and earth karma,

Sucher bases his knowledge of these influences on a decades long study of specific correlations between earth events and cosmic events involving planets and their orbital elements (nodes and apsides). He studied the correlations between death and birth asterograms using data provided by Steiner. Steiner gained these data by studying the sequence of earth lives of particular individuals. The result of these decades of work is a comprehensive grasp of how cosmic influences affect events on earth including natural events and human lives.

The understanding of how cosmic beings work in earth events provides the basis for the therapeutic use of individual asterograms. As Sucher says over and over in all his work, the new astrology is not to be used to predict anything, it is to be used to reveal challenges and potentialities. As Steiner emphasizes in Human And Cosmic Thought (lecture four), the gods take into account karmic influences as well as their own interest in becoming conscious of their thoughts. It is possible to discern how this tangle of influences is reflected in an astrology chart and in a life story.

A New Astrology

Kepler tried to develop a new astrology based on the heliocentric description of the cosmos developed by Copernicus. Kepler did this by introducing the idea of planetary spheres into astrology. Although he was a gifted , well-regarded astrologer he did not succeed in developing a new astrology. However, he did provide the basis for it in his discovery of the mathematical laws governing the movement of the planets in their orbits around the sun. Willi Sucher completed the development of a new astrology. Sucher describes his approach in a little self-published book with the title Practical Approaches Towards A New Astrosophy. As is abundantly evident in his book, Sucher’s work is based on cosmology described in Rudolf Steiner’s book Occult Science and in his many lectures.

Spiritual Science
The cosmology described by Rudolf Steiner is one of the many results of his researches in the supersensible world in which our sensible world is embedded. He called this body of knowledge spiritual science. It has many specific branches. We are concerned here with one that was not developed until Willi Sucher found his way out of traditional astrology into spiritual science. He took fire, so to speak, when he saw that he could develop a new astrology based on spiritual science, particularly the cosmology. This was a continuation of the task to which Kepler, also an astrologer, had devoted a lifetime without success. Sucher gave the name astrosophy to the new astrology that he developed.

Planetary Spheres
The sphere of a planet is the space enclosed within its orbit. Each such orbit has four specific points that help to describe its elliptical path. These orbits and elements are well observed and determined by astronomers. The elements of a planet are called nodes and apsides. The planetary orbits can be viewed as nearly circular concentric ellipses in the sun/earth plane with the sun as center, each slightly tipped to this plane. A planet passes through the ecliptic plane at its nodes. It is most distant from the sun at its aphelion and closest at its perihelion.

Steiner found each constellation and sphere to be the home of members of the spiritual hierarchies. In astrosophy we consider the constellations of the zodiac and the following heavenly bodies: Pluto, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Moon, Venus, and Mercury. The cosmic events we consider are meetings of planetary elements and heavenly bodies with each other and with the constellations. Sucher studied such meetings extensively to determine their correlation, if any, with events on earth. He studied all of history as recorded by Steiner and others. Many of his findings are described in his book Practical Approaches Towards A New Astrosophy and in other writings.

Spiritual Nativity
Since the actions of human beings express the thoughts that live in them, consciously or unconsciously, their thoughts hold the key to understanding their life story. A primary application of astrology is to do just that—help a person to understand their life story (and themselves). A new astrology needs to start from this aspect of a person’s asterogram (as Sucher calls an astrology chart). As Steiner says in lecture four of Human and Cosmic Thought, each human being is given a predisposition to a particular way of thinking about the world. This way of thinking about the world is given to a human being at an appropriate moment before or after the physical birth. He called it the spiritual nativity in contrast to the physical nativity.

Human And Cosmic Thought
A most important result of the work Steiner accomplished before 1900 is the book published originally in 1894 under the title Philosophie der Freiheit. It is currently available in English under the title Intuitive Thinking As A Spiritual Path. This book contains a thorough going development of the thinking foundation upon which spiritual science rests. As Steiner describes in lecture one of Human And Cosmic Thought, very few people actually think in our time. Instead, they manipulate words as labels.

Steiner makes it painfully clear in many books, essays, and lectures given after 1900 that this is a necessary phase in the evolution of human beings toward inner freedom from words and from conscious and unconscious influences coming from supersensible beings of all kinds. Each person has to develop the inner strength to resist the influence of supersensible beings who would enslave him. This strength is acquired by successfully overcoming these influences and even enlisting their help in doing the good, as people say.

In the essays published under the title The Michael Mystery Steiner tells how cosmic intelligence has always been administered by the archangel Michael as he brings it closer and closer to becoming accessible to human beings. He gave it over to them in 1879 and since then adversarial beings also have access to human thinking. Michael waits for human beings to become his coworkers in the task of administering the cosmic intelligence now manifesting as human thoughts. As Steiner says in lecture four of Human And Cosmic Thought, the gods need this help from human beings in order to become conscious of their own thoughts as do thinking human beings. Michael stands ready to help.