The Cost of the Poet's Light: Coleridge and Star Wisdom
A free lecture by David Tresemer, Ph.D.
Thursday, November 10, 2016
7:30 pm Stegmann Hall
The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge received "Kubla Khan" in a waking vision. What can we learn through star wisdom and modern psychology about the angel who revealed itself to him? What is the cost of the poet's light?
Weaving together insights from both astrosophy and psychosophy, David will share with us the results of his research.
In 1797 the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with Wordsworth a leader of the romantic Lake Poets of central England, awakened from a drug-induced sleep to receive a waking vision of the vast grand palace of the legendary Kubla Khan. He swiftly wrote line after line of rhyming poetry.
In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
But he was interrupted by a knock at the door, "the man from Porlock." When he came back to his writing, the rest of the grand poem had slipped away. The lines that he wrote were left untouched for 19 years, then published in 1816 as a "fragment."
What comes through this poem is one of the clearest pictures of what in anthroposophy is called the Luciferic double.
In this talk, Tresemer shall apply techniques of astrosophy (intelligent star wisdom) to Coleridge's birth, especially in relation to this moment when the veils to spiritual worlds thinned and this force - usually invisible - was made visible.
Marcia Burchard will also play piano music related to the star-positions of the life of Coleridge.
No registration required. Donations appreciated.
David Tresemer is president of the Association for Anthroposophic Psychology (AAP) which runs nine-seminar trainings in anthroposophic psychology at RSC; this talk takes place during AAP's 8th seminar.
Rudolf Steiner College, 9200 Fair Oaks Boulevard, Fair Oaks, CA 95628
Stegmann Hall is near the RSC Bookstore, and across from our cafe