Happy Birthday, Rudolf Steiner

Though much attention is focused on 2025 as the 100th anniversary year of Rudolf Steiner's death (March 30, 1925), this week marks the 164th anniversary of his birth, on February 25 (or 27), 1861. Born Rudolf Josef Lorenz Steiner, he came into the world at the time of the Feast of Matthias (February 24) and nine months after his parents' marriage at the eve of Ascension Day, May 17, 1860. Whitsun was on May 27 in 1860. A certain 'signature' presents itself in these dates, if we follow what Rudolf Steiner described in his 1921 lecture on the alphabet (GA 209):

"When, in primeval words, the human being had to express the rich store of the divine in all its fullness, he uttered the letters of the alphabet. When he expressed the mystery of his own nature, in the way he learned about it in the Mysteries, then he voiced how he had descended through Saturn or Jupiter in their stellar relation to the Lion or the Virgin, in other words, how he had descended through the A or the I in their relation to the M or the L. The human being gave utterance to what he had then experienced of the music of the spheres, and that was his cosmic name. And in those ancient days human beings were instinctively aware that they brought a name down with them from the cosmos to the Earth.

"Since then Christian consciousness still preserves this primeval consciousness in an abstract way by consecrating individual days to the memory of saints, who, rightly understood, should give new life to the spiritual cosmos. By being born on a particular day of the year we should receive the name of the saint whose day it is on the calendar. What is meant to be expressed here in a more abstract way, was more concretely expressed in primeval times, when in the Mysteries the cosmic name of a person was found in accordance with what they experienced as they descended to earth..."

Looking further into the historic events tucked into the calendar on the days surrounding Rudolf Steiner’s birthday can be a strengthening exercise for contemplating one’s own "descent to earth through the spiritual cosmos."

- On February 24th there is an Orthodox Feast of the First and Second Finding of Head of John Baptist
- February 24 is also the date of the inter gravissimas, the Papal Bull of 1582 that resulted in the Gregorian Calendar Reform
- Pico Della Mirandola, the Renaissance humanist whom Rudolf Steiner spoke about in relation to Rosicrucianism and Modern Initiation (GA 233a), was born on February 24, 1463
- John Keats, English romantic poet, died February 23, 1821, age 25

The mysteries of the Baptist; of the calendar as a way to engage with the spiritual cycle of the year; a human-centered understanding of world mysteries; poetry; all of this clustered around the Feast of Matthias, whose singular presence affirmed the community of 12 Apostles, which released the rushing winds and flaming tongues of the Pentecost.

Bearing the imprint of this spiritual cosmos, Rudolf Steiner descended to life on earth, 164 years ago this week.