Additional information
by Michael Hedley Burton (Author)
SEASONS OF THE SOUL is a study of the rhythm of the year and its relationship to the human soul, based on "The Calendar of the Soul" by Rudolf Steiner. These 52 poems are expanded versions of Steiner's short verses, written in such a way as to release something of the incredible concentration of the original writing. This is writing that gets back to the primary importance of poetry as a means by which people are enabled to take hold of the power to transform and liberate themselves. Steiner's "Calendar of the Soul", if followed by a sensitive participant through the course of the year, has within it the capacity to cut through the illusion of humanity's separation from the world. As the book's foreword states, "We are living at a time when ... alienation from the natural world - and from ourselves and from our spiritual origins - is the single most pressing, underlying problem facing us today. We would not treat the natural world the way we do if we felt more closely connected to it." It is now 100 years since Steiner wrote "The Calendar of the Soul". Since that time, many of the predictions he made for cataclysmic events on earth have come true. These disasters were guaranteed to happen, Steiner stated, if human beings failed to find a new way of thinking that brought their ideas into harmony with the spiritual and natural forces that underlie all life. Steiner did not focus on the negative but gave us the means to change our effects upon the world and to bring about a huge revolution in the quality of life on earth. In these poems the way is shown as to how this revolution through self-transformation can take place. If done, it will affect for the good far more than human life alone.
Author Biography
MICHAEL HEDLEY BURTON has worked with the ideas of Rudolf Steiner since 1976. Out of the direction he has been given from this radical thinker, Burton endeavours in all his work to renew understanding for the significance of human speech. He is at present active in the fields of writing, voice teaching, speech therapy, chirophonetic therapy and live performance. He lives with his wife in Sydney, Australia.
