From the book:
"We are each meant to discover the connection from our individual soul to spiritual realities not encompassed by the normal senses, requiring supersensible perception. Images can offer powerful assistance.... However, we have forgotten about our own imagination, the creation of our own images. What was meant to be a balance between self-created imaginations and the enjoyment of others' imaginations has become seriously lopsided.... We have become gluttons, even if unwilling gluttons, of images. The energetic body becomes fat while the soul starves. We are meant to feed the soul with our own realizations of its gifts. The personality and the soul feed each other, constantly."

A gift was given you at your first breath - have you opened it? It came from the stars and impressed itself into you at your most vulnerable moment. In this introduction to astrosophy, or star wisdom, a science with ancient roots and modern relevance, David Tresemer shows how the patterns written in the heavens influence a person's life. Taking as an example the remarkable life of Rudolf Steiner, Tresemer demonstrates the Oracle of the Solar Cross, whose four points interact throughout each of our lives to shape opportunities and challenges that our souls must face.

Steiner spoke often of the "starry script" and hinted that, whereas its patterns impress themselves upon the human psyche, we can also influence this heavenly text, altering it in service of the continued development of humanity. Through stories from the life and examples from the work of Steiner as well as the Star Brothers and Sisters who share aspects of his Solar Cross, Tresemer illuminates this truth.

Rich in art and anecdote, this groundbreaking book gives insight into the foundations of anthroposophy and shows how great acts, feelings, and thoughts by human beings on Earth shine out and impress their patterns into the cosmos.

DAVID TRESEMER, Ph.D., has a doctorate in psychology. In 1990, he cofounded the StarHouse in Boulder, Colorado, for community gatherings and workshops (www.TheStarHouse.org) and cofounded, with his wife Lila, the Healing Dreams Retreat Centre in Australia (www.healingdreams.com.au). He has also founded the Star Wisdom website (www.StarWisdom.org), which offers readings from the Oracle of the Solar Crosses, an oracle relating to the heavenly imprint received on one's day of birth. Dr. Tresemer has written in many areas, including The Scythe Book: Mowing Hay, Cutting Weeds, and Harvesting Small Grains with Hand Tools and a book on mythic theater, War in Heaven: Accessing Myth Through Drama. With his wife, he also coauthored several plays produced in the U.S., including My Magdalene (winner of Moondance 2004, Best Script). With William Bento and Robert Schiappacasse, he wrote Signs in the Heavens: A Message for Our Time, about the comets Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp and their crossing of the mysterious and ominous star Algol.

ROBERT SCHIAPPACASSE is President of Sunbridge College in Chestnut Ridge, New York, and former administrative director and a member of the board of trustees at the Shining Mountain Waldorf School in Boulder, Colorado. He teaches in the Waldorf School Administration and Community Development Program at Sunbridge College and at Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, California. Robert consults with Waldorf schools nationally on administration, organization, and governance. He became a member of the Anthroposophical Society in 1979 and joined the first class of the School of Spiritual Science in 1993.

In 1977, Schiappacasse became a student of Willie Sucher, a pioneer of an anthroposophically based star wisdom, or astrosophy. He has participated in many conferences and workshops on the subject and lectures on a variety of anthroposophic topics, including festivals, cosmic Christianity, and humanity's relationship to the world of the stars. He is coauthor with David Tresemer and William Bento of the book Signs in the Heavens and with David Tresemer of an article, "The Chain Reaction Experiment."

April 2007; 396pp; 23 x 15 cm; pb;