Rosanne
Although this is my reply to another thread on find the planets visually in the TdM Marseilles- I think it belongs more here.
This an excerpt from an essay/lecture by Ruldolf Steiner written in 1916? I believe this also. It is strange that the Tree of life is considered by some a description called the Serpent of the Cross. Aleph the Breath to Tau the cross. If you go from Bright star + Planets to Bright star (fixed stars) - joining the dots for example of the Winter fixed stars- Capella on to >Alderbaran>Rigel>Sirius>Procyon>Pollux with Betelgeuse in the middle you get a Tree of Life diagram with Betelgeuse at Yesod foundation. Betelguese is means House/Temple of the Twins. Capella is at Kether/Crown. Interesting I think, and I like the connections. Kwaw has posted a poem in another thread.......
~Rosanne
Considered from this point of view, what was the alphabet? It was what the heavens revealed through their fixed stars and through the planets moving across them. When the alphabet was spoken out of the original, instinctive, human wisdom it was astronomy that was expressed. What was spoken through the alphabet and what was taught in astronomy in those olden days was one and the same thing. The wisdom in the astronomy of those times was not presented in the same way as the learning contained in any branch of knowledge today, which is built up from single perceptions and concepts. It was conceived as a revelation that made itself felt on the surface of human experience, either in the form of an axiomatic truth or as part of an axiomatic truth. Thus a concrete experience was represented with a part of the primal wisdom. And there was something of quite a dim consciousness connected with the fact that, in the Middle Ages, those who were highly educated still had to learn grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. In this ascent through the various spheres of learning lies a half conscious recognition of something, which in earlier days, existed in instinctive clarity. Today grammar has become very abstract. Going back into times of which history tells us nothing, but which, nevertheless, are still historical times, we find that grammar was not the abstract subject it is today but that men were led through grammar into the mystery of the individual letters. They learned that the secrets of the cosmos found expression in the letters. The single vowel was brought into connection with its planet, the single consonant with the single sign of the Zodiac; thus, through the letters of the alphabet, Man gained knowledge of the stars.
This an excerpt from an essay/lecture by Ruldolf Steiner written in 1916? I believe this also. It is strange that the Tree of life is considered by some a description called the Serpent of the Cross. Aleph the Breath to Tau the cross. If you go from Bright star + Planets to Bright star (fixed stars) - joining the dots for example of the Winter fixed stars- Capella on to >Alderbaran>Rigel>Sirius>Procyon>Pollux with Betelgeuse in the middle you get a Tree of Life diagram with Betelgeuse at Yesod foundation. Betelguese is means House/Temple of the Twins. Capella is at Kether/Crown. Interesting I think, and I like the connections. Kwaw has posted a poem in another thread.......
I can see how the stars could have made the tree.In his Confessio Amantis John Gower (1330-1408) wrote in verse how Nectanabus was an astronomer and great magician who taught Alexander the properties of the stars:
And tuo and twenty, to the syhte
Whiche aren of hemself so bryhte,
That men mai dieme what thei be,
The nature and the proprete.
The 22 stars 'bryhte to the syhte' are the 15 fixed as taught by Nectanabus to Alexander [which Gower names as Aldeboran, Clota or the Pliades, Algol, Alhaiot, Canis Major, Canis Minor, Arial, Ala Corvi, Alaezel, Almareth, Venenas, Alpheta, Cor Scorpionis, Botercadent, Tail of Scorpio] and 7 wandering [ie, the seven traditional planets].
~Rosanne