English Issue 5/2024

We often light a candle in preparation: to set the mood for the beginning of a time of veneration, meditation, or celebration. The festival of Candlemas, with ancient roots in the Northern Hemisphere, has a similar quality of expectancy. Celebrated today, on the 2nd of February, it signals the return of the light out of winter darkness. You can feel the pulse quicken, as the shift towards more hours of daylight starts happening faster and faster now.

Our articles this week also carry a certain anticipatory quality. They invite us to begin looking forward to new possibilities: the reconciliation of our inner and outer worlds offered by the dream of a third Goetheanum or the gift of the bees’ winter sleep; a refreshingly different look at events in Rudolf Steiner’s life from the play “Fire in the Temple”; or simply a renewed impetus for our hearts, inspired by an old master, Pascal.