Thank you for taking the initiative to start up this group Sebastian. I hope it will be useful to share the work in progress on my questions, based on several years of reworking the verses in English.

It is not so obvious who is being addressed - my individual soul, soul shared by humanity as a whole? It does not say souls of human beings... Who is calling? Most importantly, on hearing the call, am I willing to listen?

In 2007 is it still ok to use the term Man?

more later...

I think the problem with Man is not that it refers to all human beings but that it also refers to only the people who aren't women.  "Wo" - is there an opposite to "Wo" which could go in front of man?

I think this lines is essentially a call to my own soul.

I would be very happy to hear how you have reworked the verses in English.  It is the most amazing possibility that opens up for us when a work of art is translated!

S-)

Sebastian - thank you for your confidence!

The work in progress on an English recreation will arrive as it feels ready.

The first line comes as:

Human soul!

I take it as a call to each soul and all souls.

Hi Sebastian and John,

This is a bit of a digression but... We were discussing the topic of the words "man" and "woman" in a study group last week and our priest pointed out that Old English was actually much less sexist in this way.

In Old English the words wer and wyf (also wæpman and wifman) were what was used to refer to "a man" and "a woman" respectively, and "Man" was gender neutral. In Middle English man displaced wer as term for "male human", whilst wyfman (which eventually evolved into woman) was retained for "female human". ("Wyf" also evolved into the word "wife".) "Man" does continue to carry its original sense of "Human" however, resulting in an asymmetry sometimes criticized as sexist.[1] (See also Womyn.)

This use is more like the German Mensch which I understand is also more gender neutral.  Hence Menschenseele!

So soul of men, of both wifmen and waemen, take heed!

Right that's decided then.  When I want to refer to not women I will use the word wer.  When I want to refer to all human beings I will use the term man.  I must say, this makes wereworlf much less frightening.

Now I wonder if anybody would like to say something about what Soul is.  I know this might seem an obvious question, but this is such an important line and the rest of the verses 1, 3 and 5 refer to it.  What is Soul?

Hi Sebastian,

Below is my favourite "textbook definition" of body, soul and spirit from Rudolf S.  See especially the paragraph in bold:

"Theosophy", Chapter I

The Essential Nature of Man

 The following words of Goethe point beautifully to the beginning of one way by which the essential nature of man can be known. “As soon as a person becomes aware of the objects around him, he considers them in relation to himself, and rightly so, because his whole fate depends on whether they please or displease him, attract or repel, help or harm him. This quite natural way of looking at or judging things appears to be as easy as it is necessary. A person is, nevertheless, exposed through it to a thousand errors that often make him ashamed and embitter his life.

 “A far more difficult task is undertaken by those whose keen desire for knowledge urges them to strive to observe the objects of nature as such and in their relationship to each other. These individuals soon feel the lack of the test that helped them when they, as men, regarded the objects in reference to themselves personally. They lack the test of pleasure and displeasure, attraction and repulsion, usefulness and harmfulness. Yet this test must be renounced entirely. They ought as dispassionate and, so to speak, divine beings, to seek and examine what is, not what gratifies. Thus the true botanist should not be moved either by the beauty or by the usefulness of the plants. He must study their formation and their relation to the rest of the plant kingdom. They are one and all enticed forth and shone upon by the sun without distinction, and so he should, equably and quietly, look at and survey them all and obtain the test for this knowledge, the data for his deductions, not out of himself, but from within the circle of the things he observes.”

 This thought thus expressed by Goethe directs man's attention to three divisions of things. First, the objects concerning which information continually flows to him through the doors of his senses — the objects he touches, smells, tastes, hears and sees. Second, the impressions that these make on him, characterizing themselves through the fact that he finds the one sympathetic, the other abhorrent, the one useful, another harmful. Third, the knowledge that he, as a “so to speak divine being,” acquires concerning the objects, that is, the secrets of their activities and their being as they unveil themselves to him.

 These three divisions are distinctly separate in human life, and man thereby becomes aware that he is interwoven with the world in a threefold way. The first division is one that he finds present, that he accepts as a given fact. Through the second he makes the world into his own affair, into something that has a meaning for him. The third he regards as a goal towards which he ought unceasingly to strive.

 Why does the world appear to man in this threefold way? A simple consideration will explain it. I cross a meadow covered with flowers. The flowers make their colors known to me through my eyes. That is the fact I accept as given. Having accepted the fact, I rejoice in the splendor of the colors. Through this I turn the fact into an affair of my own. Through my feelings I connect the flowers with my own existence. Then, a year later I go again over the same meadow. Other flowers are there. Through them new joys arise in me. My joy of the former year will appear as a memory. This is in me. The object that aroused it in me is gone, but the flowers I now see are of the same kind as those I saw the year before. They have grown in accordance with the same laws as have the others. If I have informed myself regarding this species and these laws, I then find them again in the flowers of this year, just as I found them in those of last year. So I shall perhaps muse, “The flowers of last year are gone and my joy in them remains only in my memory. It is bound up with my existence alone. What I recognized in the flowers of last year and recognize again this year, however, will remain as long as such flowers grow. That is something that revealed itself to me, but it is not dependent on my existence in the same way as my joy is. My feelings of joy remain in me. The laws, the being of the flowers, remain outside of me in the world.”

 By these means man continually links himself in this threefold way with the things of the world. One should not, for the present, read anything into this fact, but merely take it as it stands. From this it can be seen that man has three sides to his nature. This and nothing else will, for the present, be indicated here by the three words, body, soul and spirit. Whoever connects any preconceived opinions or even hypotheses with these three words will necessarily misunderstand the following explanations. By body is here meant that through which the things in the environment of a man reveal themselves to him, as in the above example, the flowers in the meadow. By the word soul is signified that by which he links the things to his own being, through which he experiences pleasure and displeasure, desire and aversion, joy and sorrow in connection with them. By spirit is meant what becomes manifest in him when as Goethe expressed it, he looks at things as a “so to speak divine being.” In this sense man consists of body, soul and spirit.

 Through his body man is able to place himself for the time being in connection with things; through his soul he retains in himself the impressions they make on him; through his spirit there reveals itself to him what the things retain for themselves. Only when we observe man in these three aspects can we hope to throw light on his whole being, because they show him to be related in a threefold way to the rest of the world.

 Through his body man is related to the objects that present themselves to his senses from without. The materials from the outer world compose his body, and the forces of the outer world work also in it. He observes the things of the outer world with his senses, and he also is able to observe his own bodily existence. It is impossible, however, for him to observe his soul existence in the same way. Everything in him that is bodily process can be perceived with his bodily senses. His likes and dislikes, his joy and pain, neither he nor anyone else can perceive with bodily senses. The region of the soul is inaccessible to bodily perception. The bodily existence of a man is manifest to all eyes; the soul existence he carries within himself as his world. Through the spirit, however, the outer world is revealed to him in a higher way. The mysteries of the outer world, indeed, unveil themselves in his inner being. He steps in spirit out of himself and lets the things speak about themselves, about what has significance not for him but for them. For example, man looks up at the starry heavens. The delight his soul experiences belongs to him. The eternal laws of the stars that he comprehends in thought, in spirit, belong not to him but to the stars themselves.

 In this way, man is a citizen of three worlds. Through his body he belongs to the world that he also perceives through his body; through his soul he constructs for himself his own world; through his spirit a world reveals itself to him that is exalted above both the others.

 It seems obvious that because of the essential difference of these three worlds, a clear understanding of them and of man's share in them can only be obtained by means of three different modes of observation.

 This is so simple, and so practical and it presupposes nothing in the reader beyond a capacity for observation and reflection - really the definition could be accepted equally by an extreme materialist or an extreme spiritualist.  It is just that each of those people would probably add something else onto Steiner's definition in their own thinking: "what he really means is..."

As I have worked with this verse, I have wondered if the Mensch in Menchenseele is that highest most elevated part of the human being (that self transformed part that can be a container or vessel for the "I" the ego, rather than the earthly personality of the human being. I have also wondered if menschenseele is referring to the archetype of the human being?  I also have felt the translated first line in my experience to be "human soul" in english.  In a prior discussion of this verse, someone mentioned to me they felt there was an exclamation that preceded human soul.  hence the "O or Oh" we sometimes see in some of the translations.  The "O" being inherent in Der Mensch.  Great to see this on this site.  thank you!

Dear Friends,

I may be jumping a little ahead of this discussion but the timeliness seemed to make it important to share this with you. I am currently away from home and don't have my usual reference materials.  However, I have been working again with the Foundation Stone because of this group.  I wanted to respond today because it is a Wednesday and that was the Day of the Week Steiner Introduced the Foundation Stone at the Christmas Conference.  I also noticed that This year the 26th of December falls on a Wednesday also the Day Steiner introduced this special work.

For myself, I want to use the indications he gave in terms of meditating daily with the rhythms of the Foundation Stone.  I will give the rhythm I have written down in my notes and when I get home next week, I will type out Steiners actual indications.  

Because of all I have stumbled on while searching on the internet recently I feel an even greater sense of urgency to work with the Foundation Stone, the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity the Ruckshaw and the Werbeck Swärdstrom thx exercises. I do this to strengthen myself for all that seems to be moving toward us.

Wednesday:  The first rhythm Rudolf Steiner Suggested, He spoke the first half of the first three panels.  He spoke of the importance of the Foundation Stone and gave indications for the rhythms we could work with:For me, recollection is literally re-collection or re-membering , collecting all of our lifetimes

Geist –Erinnern,Spirit Recollection       Geist-Besinnen Spirit Meditation       Geist Erschauen Sprit Envisioning
     Das eigne Ich That your “I”                   Das eigne Ich That Your “I”                Dem eignen Ich That your “I”
     Im Gottes Ich In God’s “I”                     Dem Welten Ich In the World “I”         Zu freiem Wollen For free & active will
     Erweset Grows into  full being               Vereinen Unites                                Schenken Think  [JR this word is incorrectly translated - should be BESTOW]
 

In a discussion on the word Besinnen what helped our group was to see the translated word as form of actively seeking and passively receiving in which meditation would fit. The clarification was helpful to me as there can be many concepts of the word “meditation”.

t

Dear Friends,

My attempt to format the rhythm did not work.  It looked fine on the preview but did not come out on the post.  I am not sure how to correct this?

t

Spirit Recollection

That Your "I" in God's "I"

Grows into being

-------------------------------

Spirit Meditation

That your "I" in the World "I"

Unite

___________________

Spirit Envisioning

That your "I" For Free and Active Will

Think

Hello WeSing4Health

I have adjusted you original post so that the rhythms are more readable.

Forgive me but there is an incorrect translation that I have noted in your post. I hope you do not mind.

Denken = thinking and shenken = bestow, or similar.

I would not normally make a correction but this one is significant.

Dear John,

I should have checked more carefully before I posted, Thank you for catching it!!!!

t

I have been working with "Oh Human Soul" for the las few days and my experience is that it is stronger - it calls me forward in to myself.  Whereas "Soul of Man" now seems rather impersonal as though it is for others to hear, but not me myself.

Thank you wesing4health!  I agree about how important this meditation is.

I hope that as we work in to it further we will be able to explore the rhythms more.

I am also hoping that we will find and share our own discoveries, as well as learning from what RS has to tell us.

S-)

Hi Sdaj,

I had been working with a different translation from the one you have posted here on the PoF website.  But now I have started to work with the translation that you have posted here.  It makes it very interesting for me because the translation I have been working with is the one that Rudolf Steiner recited on the last day of the Christmas Conference on Jan. 1, 1924  (the actual conference was Dec. 24, 1923 through Jan. 1, 1924) and includes mention of the spiritual hierarchies.

I am beginning to warm to the translation you have posted.  I would be interested in knowing who your translation is by.  As far as which beginning phase works for me better:  "Oh Human Soul" or "Soul of Man" - I am experiencing "Oh Human Soul"  to be a richer and fuller experience for me as it bears and creates the experience of a bigger picture right out into the cosmos, where just saying (or thinking) "Soul of Man" seems to keep the phase earthbound

This is a wonderful experiment, much thanks for bringing this forward.

Love you,
Patri