I find this incredible! In many ways I "identify with" Novalis and am about to write something comparing the aesthetic approach of Chateaubriand and the metaphysical approach of Novalis - to renewing Christianity in its mystical and spiritual dimension. I too was born in early May, the 9th of that month in 1959. My hair was already grown long before I discovered him, and I was amazed to discover his innocent but mature face. I named my sailing boat "Novalis" for my love of discovering new waters and places in nature around the coast of Brittany. Thank you for your insight and analogical understanding of his "Christenheit" as well as his "Hymnen an die Nacht" (translation by Geoge MacDonald) to help us English-speakers.
Thanks, Michael, for the peek into your spiritual biography. What make I of these cooincidences? First, it's no coincidence that I have both the Higgins and the McDonald translations (of Hymns to the Night) handy--not tucked vertically into the bookshelf but horizontal on my table tops, one upstairs and one downstairs. That because, like Michael, I've connected with this archetypal individuality, Novalis, whose name means "breaking up ground with a mattock." (Thanks Chris Bamford for that one.) Novalis is the heavenly gardener tilling the earth--like Michael mentioned. The cooincidence is, I think, a mark of the mood of our time. We all want to take part in the "breaking up ground" for a new planting. Rudolf Steiner gave the Foundation Stone Meditation and his group sculpture sometimes called "The Universal Human," or "The Representative of Humanity," in a timely manner so that we can all connect with this Wisdom--Sophia, that Novalis so deliciously encounters for us. Behind both of these masterpieces by Steiner lies Isis-Sophia.
This connecting with the stars, which is experiential for many of us—is a meeting with Isis/Sophia, whether we know it or not. She is after all “the woman clothed with the Sun, with the moon beneath her feet and upon her head a crown with 12 stars,” (Moon sphere, Sun Sphere, Stars/Zodiac sphere) of the Revelation to St. John. According to Steiner the Novalis individuality was St. John in a previous incarnation—or so referred to in Steiner’s last public address. This experience has been and shall be a reality more substantial than our sense perceptible reality for many of us—not just Vladmir Soloviev, who is famous for his “Three Meetings” with Sophia. Michael would be more the expert on this...
So, says Steiner, in his New Isis Myth, behind the Representative of Humanity is Isis/Sophia. “Everyone can see plainly written under the group sculpture the saying: I am the human being. I am the Past, Present and Future, every mortal should life my veil.” A similar declamation was written, we learn, under the statue of Isis at Sais in ancient Egypt. It was the goal of initiates to behold Isis/Sophia, the Wisdom of the Starry Cosmos, of which we are a microcosm. Under her statue was the saying: “I am the All, I am the Past the Present and the Future, no mortal can lift my veil.”
I mentioned above, the Foundation Stone Meditation as a key to meeting Isis/Sophia. Those familiar with the FS will say, “but I don’t see any mention of Isis/Sophia in the FS.” But, yes, it is, again “behind” the FS that one finds Isis/Sophia. Steiner let the cat our of the bag when he said that Isis is behind the statue of the Representative of Humanity. He didn’t say it, but I am saying that Isis is also behind the FS. Clearly, the FS, in its first three panels fits the description of St. John or the Great Portent, “a woman clothed with the sun...etc.” Anyone interested can see my article detailing the mystery of the Sophia behind the Foundation Stone Meditation in my article entitled “The Foundation Stone as the Being of Isis Sophia.” https://independent.academia.edu/BillTrusiewicz
I’m connecting, Michael, with your starry connections, based on my meeting with Isis Sophia in my youth, which was not an imaginative vision like that of Soloviev, but an intuitive experience. My “body” grew to encompass and “feel” Isis/Sophia within—as myself—as a dimension of myself being revealed to me. It was a kind of reeling in the widening gyres of the moon’s orbit, the Sun’s orbit and the arms of the Milky Way through space. It was a meeting with a more real part of me that I myself—if you get what I mean.
In closing, I’d say we are all on the cusp of this experience that the new “John the Baptist,” Novalis, wants to invite us, into which Michael has introduced us. It is a new baptism into the cosmic sea (we are after all in the age of Pisces, the Fishes, and we are the Fishes), which is a “sea of stars.” Paradoxically, this baptism takes place both “in the heavens” and “on the earth.” Since the incarnation, starry Wisdom, comes only to those who connect not only with the stars above but also grounded in the earth beneath—Novalis like! “As above, so below.”
Oct 26, 2023·edited Oct 26, 2023Liked by The Druid Stares Back
Remembering Friedrich is good . Novalis is also a favorite of mine however I don't know if I have any astrological relation to him. It was interesting that you were able to bring that aspect into your essay. I have noted that recently within Jungian circles astrology has been discussed.
Novalis seems to be in the air. About a week ago I was talking with my fellow artist Rita Schwab and from out of nowhere Friedrich came up and Rita said she had read a lot of Novalis in German and that much of it is not translated. I think there is some movement to make more translations available of not only his poetry but other works.
I've not had the resources to follow up on this question but have wondered if Poe was influenced by Novalis? Seems like a good fit to me. He has certainly inspired many people through the years. I have done a large painting that I attribute to Novalis influence and I will publish it on my Substack if the opportunity arises.
D S Reif, I'd like to see your painting inspired by Novalis!
Speaking of connections to the stars (astrology etc.) I'm reminded of Kant's famous words he had inscribed on his tomb: "Two things are most awe inspiring for me, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me." I try to see the stars when I observe someone with moral integrity. This is what inspired a poem I wrote "For Novalis." (Michael knows this poem. He published it in his journal "Jesus the Imagination," Volume 5, 2021.) I'll share it here:
Hello Michael: That is indeed an exceptional degree of astrological overlap! I believe I've noticed too that many persons with a deep involvement with Christology and Sophiology have some—often significant—presence in the 12th house. Both Novalis, with his packed 12th, and you, with Uranus and Pluto, fit that pattern. If you look up Teilhard de Chardin's chart—another Christologist, though of different stripe—he is another individuality with a huge concentration of Taurus (6 planets!!) in (4) or on the cusp (2) of the 12th, plus Moon in Gemini there as well. Can't get much more in the 12th than that!
As far as you are concerned, I'd imagine that Uranus transiting your Moon-Sun conjunction in Taurus in the 9th from the onset of Covid may have been material in loosing your ties to religious institution, and foregrounding a new degree of spiritual independence. I'd be curious to know how you experienced/are experiencing that momentous passage. Speaking of Uranus, it's no accident that Novalis has been emerging on the horizon, since Uranus has been transiting his Taurus planets and is right now going back and forth over his natal Uranus at 20 Taurus, lighting up the unique spiritual impulse intrinsic to his genius. I, too, have always thought it significant that he is the subject of Steiner's last lecture!
I think you're absolutely right about the 12th house--Pluto sitting on my ascendant is pretty significant. And I can see it in Novalis as well.
And, yes, that Uranus transit over my Sun and Moon (while squaring my Saturn and trining Pluto) during my second Saturn return was pretty transformative--but very difficult. I came out of it pretty much a Romantic Christian and more rebellious than ever.
I know that I’m Scorpio sun, Aries moon, and Gemini rising; I don’t know what much of that means, although I’ve heard some women teasingly say “trouble”. I had assumed for a long while that astrology was just hokum that plays on pattern recognition. But given my more recent familiarity with the analogy of microcosmos and macrocosmos, I have begun to reconsider.
I find this incredible! In many ways I "identify with" Novalis and am about to write something comparing the aesthetic approach of Chateaubriand and the metaphysical approach of Novalis - to renewing Christianity in its mystical and spiritual dimension. I too was born in early May, the 9th of that month in 1959. My hair was already grown long before I discovered him, and I was amazed to discover his innocent but mature face. I named my sailing boat "Novalis" for my love of discovering new waters and places in nature around the coast of Brittany. Thank you for your insight and analogical understanding of his "Christenheit" as well as his "Hymnen an die Nacht" (translation by Geoge MacDonald) to help us English-speakers.
Thanks, Michael, for the peek into your spiritual biography. What make I of these cooincidences? First, it's no coincidence that I have both the Higgins and the McDonald translations (of Hymns to the Night) handy--not tucked vertically into the bookshelf but horizontal on my table tops, one upstairs and one downstairs. That because, like Michael, I've connected with this archetypal individuality, Novalis, whose name means "breaking up ground with a mattock." (Thanks Chris Bamford for that one.) Novalis is the heavenly gardener tilling the earth--like Michael mentioned. The cooincidence is, I think, a mark of the mood of our time. We all want to take part in the "breaking up ground" for a new planting. Rudolf Steiner gave the Foundation Stone Meditation and his group sculpture sometimes called "The Universal Human," or "The Representative of Humanity," in a timely manner so that we can all connect with this Wisdom--Sophia, that Novalis so deliciously encounters for us. Behind both of these masterpieces by Steiner lies Isis-Sophia.
This connecting with the stars, which is experiential for many of us—is a meeting with Isis/Sophia, whether we know it or not. She is after all “the woman clothed with the Sun, with the moon beneath her feet and upon her head a crown with 12 stars,” (Moon sphere, Sun Sphere, Stars/Zodiac sphere) of the Revelation to St. John. According to Steiner the Novalis individuality was St. John in a previous incarnation—or so referred to in Steiner’s last public address. This experience has been and shall be a reality more substantial than our sense perceptible reality for many of us—not just Vladmir Soloviev, who is famous for his “Three Meetings” with Sophia. Michael would be more the expert on this...
So, says Steiner, in his New Isis Myth, behind the Representative of Humanity is Isis/Sophia. “Everyone can see plainly written under the group sculpture the saying: I am the human being. I am the Past, Present and Future, every mortal should life my veil.” A similar declamation was written, we learn, under the statue of Isis at Sais in ancient Egypt. It was the goal of initiates to behold Isis/Sophia, the Wisdom of the Starry Cosmos, of which we are a microcosm. Under her statue was the saying: “I am the All, I am the Past the Present and the Future, no mortal can lift my veil.”
I mentioned above, the Foundation Stone Meditation as a key to meeting Isis/Sophia. Those familiar with the FS will say, “but I don’t see any mention of Isis/Sophia in the FS.” But, yes, it is, again “behind” the FS that one finds Isis/Sophia. Steiner let the cat our of the bag when he said that Isis is behind the statue of the Representative of Humanity. He didn’t say it, but I am saying that Isis is also behind the FS. Clearly, the FS, in its first three panels fits the description of St. John or the Great Portent, “a woman clothed with the sun...etc.” Anyone interested can see my article detailing the mystery of the Sophia behind the Foundation Stone Meditation in my article entitled “The Foundation Stone as the Being of Isis Sophia.” https://independent.academia.edu/BillTrusiewicz
I’m connecting, Michael, with your starry connections, based on my meeting with Isis Sophia in my youth, which was not an imaginative vision like that of Soloviev, but an intuitive experience. My “body” grew to encompass and “feel” Isis/Sophia within—as myself—as a dimension of myself being revealed to me. It was a kind of reeling in the widening gyres of the moon’s orbit, the Sun’s orbit and the arms of the Milky Way through space. It was a meeting with a more real part of me that I myself—if you get what I mean.
In closing, I’d say we are all on the cusp of this experience that the new “John the Baptist,” Novalis, wants to invite us, into which Michael has introduced us. It is a new baptism into the cosmic sea (we are after all in the age of Pisces, the Fishes, and we are the Fishes), which is a “sea of stars.” Paradoxically, this baptism takes place both “in the heavens” and “on the earth.” Since the incarnation, starry Wisdom, comes only to those who connect not only with the stars above but also grounded in the earth beneath—Novalis like! “As above, so below.”
Thanks for that, Bill. Lots of me to think about! Blessings
Remembering Friedrich is good . Novalis is also a favorite of mine however I don't know if I have any astrological relation to him. It was interesting that you were able to bring that aspect into your essay. I have noted that recently within Jungian circles astrology has been discussed.
Novalis seems to be in the air. About a week ago I was talking with my fellow artist Rita Schwab and from out of nowhere Friedrich came up and Rita said she had read a lot of Novalis in German and that much of it is not translated. I think there is some movement to make more translations available of not only his poetry but other works.
I've not had the resources to follow up on this question but have wondered if Poe was influenced by Novalis? Seems like a good fit to me. He has certainly inspired many people through the years. I have done a large painting that I attribute to Novalis influence and I will publish it on my Substack if the opportunity arises.
Keep up your good works. There is much to do.
Interesting observation about Poe. Makes you wonder!
D S Reif, I'd like to see your painting inspired by Novalis!
Speaking of connections to the stars (astrology etc.) I'm reminded of Kant's famous words he had inscribed on his tomb: "Two things are most awe inspiring for me, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me." I try to see the stars when I observe someone with moral integrity. This is what inspired a poem I wrote "For Novalis." (Michael knows this poem. He published it in his journal "Jesus the Imagination," Volume 5, 2021.) I'll share it here:
The Secret of the Night
(for Novalis)
When the twilight sky out-breathes
the last trace of daylight
into the heaven's deep whorl,
And a jewel be-specked brilliance
alone articulates
the dark celestial dome,
Is it not then, out of night's holy
womb—that true vision is born?
Disclosing the secrets hidden
Behind the veil of the day's deceit?
What flaming joys, what holy desires
are so expressed in those fires
that burn—yet are not consumed!
The sum of Earthly memory
spans but a few ticks
of this Immortal Clock.
No, death has no power here
where burns the eternal flame
Pure as gold
and without smoke.
Friedrich would be proud to see that.
Evidently, Substack doesn't like spaces so my careful formatting was decimated. You'll get the idea anyway...
I’ll find a context to post the painting.
To this non-astrologer, the correspondences seem real enough. That's quite a pedigree to attach yourself to, but I think you're acquitting yourself.
Hello Michael: That is indeed an exceptional degree of astrological overlap! I believe I've noticed too that many persons with a deep involvement with Christology and Sophiology have some—often significant—presence in the 12th house. Both Novalis, with his packed 12th, and you, with Uranus and Pluto, fit that pattern. If you look up Teilhard de Chardin's chart—another Christologist, though of different stripe—he is another individuality with a huge concentration of Taurus (6 planets!!) in (4) or on the cusp (2) of the 12th, plus Moon in Gemini there as well. Can't get much more in the 12th than that!
As far as you are concerned, I'd imagine that Uranus transiting your Moon-Sun conjunction in Taurus in the 9th from the onset of Covid may have been material in loosing your ties to religious institution, and foregrounding a new degree of spiritual independence. I'd be curious to know how you experienced/are experiencing that momentous passage. Speaking of Uranus, it's no accident that Novalis has been emerging on the horizon, since Uranus has been transiting his Taurus planets and is right now going back and forth over his natal Uranus at 20 Taurus, lighting up the unique spiritual impulse intrinsic to his genius. I, too, have always thought it significant that he is the subject of Steiner's last lecture!
I think you're absolutely right about the 12th house--Pluto sitting on my ascendant is pretty significant. And I can see it in Novalis as well.
And, yes, that Uranus transit over my Sun and Moon (while squaring my Saturn and trining Pluto) during my second Saturn return was pretty transformative--but very difficult. I came out of it pretty much a Romantic Christian and more rebellious than ever.
I know that I’m Scorpio sun, Aries moon, and Gemini rising; I don’t know what much of that means, although I’ve heard some women teasingly say “trouble”. I had assumed for a long while that astrology was just hokum that plays on pattern recognition. But given my more recent familiarity with the analogy of microcosmos and macrocosmos, I have begun to reconsider.
It means you're a warrior with a quick mind.
Among other things.