The Moon forces remain silent on these twelve Holy Nights, because the Moon year has ended, and the pure Sun Being is wanting to stream out into the universe to the waiting cosmos of stars...Instead of our usual imagination of the spiritual forces streaming down upon the Earth from the Zodiac, let us see it during these twelve nights as the inner spiritual Sun of the Earth streaming forth into the universe to illuminate one constellation each night in turn. We must take into account certain differences of the calendar year. The ancient calendar was Ptolemaic and based on the orbit of the Sun, the solar year taking 365½ days for the Sun to complete its orbit. Since that time, the Moon phases have been observed for their yearly calendar, for the Moon was easier to observe...the Moon calendar does not fit into the solar year, and thus the two rhythms are different, though the solar calendar is important for the observations of the seasons. What is called the sidereal month of the Moon is about 27½ days. This is the time that it takes the Moon to make a complete orbit through the Zodiac and return to the same place. The synodical month is the time that it takes for the Moon to meet with the Sun from one time to the next, which takes about 29½ days, or New Moon to New Moon, or from Full Moon to Full Moon, when the Moon is opposite the Sun and takes its full reflection. Because the rhythms of the Moon and the Sun are different, they cannot coincide on the calendar. Therefore, to the ancient peoples the Full Moon represented a rhythm of 29½ days, which made a lunar month and that does not coincide with our solar year, thought the Hebrews still use that calendar. Thus to these ancient peoples, their whole year contained twelve Full Moons. This must become more the Festival Birth of a Being experienced during those twelve Holy Nights, the Birth of an invisible Spiritual Being, of etheric and astral nature and reality. To experience this Birth is the great comfort that a real experience of the deep truths of Christianity can bring to humanity. In the future, we have to experience this as a reality, of a purely etheric or astral nature, connected with the starry world and yet shining forth from the Earth as well. It is connected with that spiritual stream which brings down the forces of the cosmos and reawakening them in the thinking, feeling, and willing of all people, so that the star may become a radiating star; for this Earth is still the dark planet of the universe. This new realization of human beings can bring into being this star world for the sake of the universe, for the Earth shall no longer receive, but the cosmos awaits that Sun-force streaming out from the cave and the crib in the midnight hour, out into the far spaces of the universe. The real Being that is born can be experienced by us on these twelve nights, and He lives on into the future, as He accompanies humanity as their silent Brother, deeply concerned with human destiny. The twelve Holy Nights throw open the gate of necessity into the realm of the real, for the Moon is slipping back and the Sun forces are temporarily unopposed. - From a lecture by Willi Sucher (date unknown). The full lecture in which each day is associated with a constellation can be found here, titled The Twelve Holy Nights. All of Willi Sucher's works are available for free download on the website, www.astrosophycenter.com.
