The Solar Gate Image of Antonin Dvorák

By David Tresemer, Ph.D.

Originally for Christian Star Calendar 2006, revised July 2006 

Anticipating the setting of the colorful and dynamic form of dance-movement called eurythmy to Dvorák’s The New World Symphony that toured the United States in the autumn of 2005,[1] I began to research an astrological biography of the composer.  I would like to share the Sun Image from his Solar Cross as that might deepen the appreciation of this astonishing performance in eurythmy and music. (This study can deepen your experience of The New World Symphony even without eurythmy!)

        First, I must give a very brief background to the Oracle of the Solar Crosses.  Extraordinary human beings have walked the earth.  Their births, their deaths, and the deeds that they have performed are imprinted into the starry worlds.  This impression is strongest through the amplifier of the Sun, setting the pattern of the event into the specific place in the zodiac in front of which the Sun lies.  When the Sun returns to that location, the cosmic memory of that deed resonating in the heavens focuses back through the Sun.  The memory becomes available as resource and inspiration to all those who are sensitive to it.  Our most sensitive moment is the moment of our birth, and we carry these sense impressions from our birth with us through our lives.

        The Oracle of the Solar Crosses presents the most important events of that area of the sky (one degree of 360 degrees in the whole zodiac) in the form of an Image derived from research and meditation on what lives in that particular place.

        At the moment that Antonin Dvorák was born on the 8^th of September, 1841, in a part of Bohemia (later Czechoslavakia), the Sun lay in the astronomical position of just over 23 degrees of Leo, The Lion.[2]  At this degree we find the following Image from The Oracle of the Solar Crosses:

The mother’s grown children roll back the heavy stones guarding the cave of her burial and find her body vanished.  Prayers of mourning turn to awe.  Glory!  Consummation!  Heaven trembles and opens.  Glory!  Angels increase in number, depth, sound – circles of angels, the closest with the faces of infants.  They receive every particle of the physical body turned to light.  Glory!

The research and meditation leading to this Image (and other Images in The Oracle of the Solar Crosses) are explained fully here, an explanation that we leave for those who are interested as we concentrate on Dvorák’s life.  Suffice it to say at this point that Dvorák took his first breath from the Sun’s amplification of the zodiacal degree where Mother Mary rose into heaven.  This event has been variously termed the Assumption or the Ascension or the Consummation of her body into divine realms, that is, the complete spiritualization of her physical body, a demonstration of what awaits all those who develop themselves on paths of spirit.  Other factors determine what goes into an Image, though Mary’s ascension is the main one in this degree.  Given the abbreviated explanation here, we can simply suggest that this notion be taken as a hypothesis.

When working with this material, we then ask, “How did this Image, impressed in heavenly substance, focus through the Sun into the being of Antonin Dvorák at the moment of his birth?  How did it guide or affect his life?”  We seek soul-themes, and they can be found in many different aspects of a life.

To begin with, the eldest son of a butcher, he was needed by his father to work in the butcher’s shop. But in those days in central Europe, it was customary that at day’s end, each member of the family would learn a musical instrument, and play with each other. Antonin’s musical talents were noticed by an uncle who then arranged education for him in Prague.  The young man found a post as an organist and choir master, and then dared to become a composer, a creator of beautiful music.  After he was noticed by Brahms, and after his Slavonic Dances were a big hit (listen especially to #8), he was embraced as composer and began travels to many other countries.   One biography states that Dvorák was “the happiest and least neurotic of the late Romantics … the healthiest of all composers.”[3]

We could look at his other works, especially the Stabat Mater, meaning, “Mother (Mary) stands (at the foot of the cross),” which he wrote after losing three of his infant children – one can see the faces of infants around the composer, as in the Image. Dvorák took the Stabat Mater beyond its usual end – to visions of paradise: “When my body shall die/Grant that my soul be given/The glory of paradise.”  He knew these realms from his first breath. The performance of his Stabat Mater that took place at the Royal Albert Hall in London had a choir of a thousand voices – indeed, the choirs of angels into which he was born!

Other people expected him to take them to paradise.  Listen to this remark by Dvorák himself about his time in America, from 1892 to 1895: “The Americans expect great things of me and the main thing is, so they say, to show them to the promised land and kingdom of a new and independent art.”[4]  Do we hear themes of his birth moment here?

Let us go to the New World Symphony, opus 95, Symphony number 9.  At its first performance at the newly completed Carnegie Center in New York, the audience was so enthusiastic that they rose in a long standing ovation between the movements!  Because it was understood that he based the composition on Negro spirituals and stories of American Indians, especially Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, performances have often been jaunty and cowboy-like.  But let’s look into this further.  Which of the Negro spirituals was prominent for Dvorák? 

Swing low, sweet chariot,

comin’ for to carry me home.

Swing low, sweet chariot,

comin’ for to carry me home. 

I looked over Jordan and what did I see,

comin’ for to carry me home. 

A band of angels, comin’ after me,

comin’ for to carry me home.

Sing it out! When a hundred people sing this wonderful song, they mirror the heavenly choirs to whom they are singing. Doesn’t this picture exactly the participation in the Image?

Here’s another stanza, an imagination of what the newborn Antonin might have said to Mary as she opened the gateway between heaven and earth:

If you get there before I do,

Comin’ for to carry me home,

Tell all my friends I’m comin’, too.

Comin’ for to carry me home.

Now let’s look at the Song of Hiawatha (pronounced, according to Longfellow’s own notes, “Hee-ah-WAH-tha”).  We could look at the beautiful death of his wife, Minnehaha or “Laughing Waters,” enfolded into realms of spirit.  And we could also look at the very end of the long poem, especially in the light of the Solar Cross Image:

Thus departed Hiawatha,

Hiawatha the Beloved,

In the glory of the Sunset,

In the purple mists of evening,

To the regions of the home-wind

Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewayhin,

To the Island of the Blessed

To the kingdom of Ponemah

To the land of the Hereafter!

        This recounts the departure of the extraordinary god-man, Hiawatha, to heavenly realms.  We see Hiawatha’s canoe drift into regions that reveal themselves as he passes into them.

        Noting the connections with Negro spirituals and the traditions of the American Indian, one commentator said about The New World Symphony: “It is, all of it, an elegy for a dying race.”[5]  Based on our understanding of the Solar Image that he breathed in at his birth, we could rephrase this completely: The symphony is a remembrance of openings between heavenly and earthly realms brought from his birth; it transcends the limits of death.

        Thus its most appropriate realization comes from matching it with the divine art of eurythmy.

Most biographies speak only of music, overlooking the fact that Dvorák was a devout Catholic, even in progressive times, something that he may have felt inspired to affirm from his birth. 

A curious feature of Dvorák’s life – he loved trains.  He would go often, sometimes daily, to the train station, to hear the trains.  He loved this “trembling” and could identify each type of engine and sometimes the actual engine from the rumbling and roar that it made.  Was he hearing some memory of the tremor and roar of the whole heavens opening? Does he try to recreate this great sound in the loud and tumultuous parts of his work, especially the Slavonic Dances (again #8), his Othello music, the Gloria in Excelsis Deo from his Mass in D, and, of course, the great crescendos of The New World Symphony?

One more comment from a critic reviewing a performance – listen to it as if Dvorák were hearing the chorus of youthful angels pictured in his birth Image: “Nothing stagnates, for Dvorák’s ear was fully alive to every voice in the harmony.”[6]

We can ask if music became the way for this “healthiest of all composers” to meet the experience of the ascension of the Divine Mother?  Holding this question in one’s heart can increase the beauty and impact of the wonderful performance with eurythmy.

When it comes to The New World Symphony, is it about America? The experts argue over Dvorák’s comments on this. Or perhaps it is about the truly and ever new world that only opens occasionally for us, the veils parting between earth and heaven, with the Divine Mother completely present among the artists, and through their artistry, among us.

In the work of a reading of Solar Crosses, this is one of four Images. Were Dvorák a client, we would lead him through this Sun Image, and ask him questions to help him discover what a resource he had in this location of the Sun at his birth. Then we would go to other Images, the one below (Earth Image), the ones on the horizons to East and West, and fill out a picture of a gift available to him from the moment of his birth.

Since Dvorák has passed over the threshold, we can work with his gift as a composer to others. When we work with someone who has the same birthday (as understood from the point of view of the stars, which shifts in relation to seasonal birthdates by one day every 72 years), we can help them find Dvorák as a Star Brother, that is, someone who negotiated their way in relation to this birth Image and whose life lends a guiding hand to those who come after.

Those who find the Historical Personalities to whom they are related by birth – their Star Brothers and Star Sisters – find that a warm relationship begins to grow, a fondness for this predecessor who can lead them with their life’s events.

Other Historical Personalities

        In the work with Solar Images, we look at others.  For reasons of space, we can look at one other – Louis XIV, the Sun King of France.[7]    What possibly could link Louis XIV with this Image?

        King Louis XIII and Anne of Austria had been childless for twenty-two years, and this was a great worry for the political stability of France, racked by wars on all sides.  Saint Fiacre then had a dream that, were the Queen to sponsor three nine-day prayer ceremonies (“novenas”), then she would indeed bear the next king.  Another dream came, in which the Virgin Mary herself appeared with a crying baby in her arms, saying, “Don’t be afraid, I am the Mother of God, and the baby that you see is the Prince which God wants to give to France.”[8]  Two hours later, Mary reappeared alone, giving Fiacre a sign in the form of a clairvoyant vision of the exact interior of the distant church at Our Lady of Graces, in Cotignac, Provence.  Reporting this to his superiors, a comparison could be made, and the veracity of the vision thus confirmed.  Brother Fiacre began these nine-day prayer sequences in the Queen’s name, and the day of their completion, 5 December 1637, turned out to be exactly nine months prior to Louis’ birth.

        Moved by these events, the pregnant Queen convinced King Louis XIII to make a public vow dedicating the whole of France to Mother Mary.  “We have declared and we declare that, taking the very holy and glorious Virgin Mary as special protectress of our kingdom, we particularly consecrate to her our own Self, the State, our Crown and our subjects.”

        At his birth Louis XIV was nicknamed God-given (“Dieudonné”).  Given by God – and by Mother Mary – Louis proceeded to create the world as a heaven on earth, and demanded to be saluted as a visible divinity.  A passage from his memoirs can be understood best in terms of the Image into which he was born:

In my heart, I prefer fame above all else, even life itself.

Perhaps dazzled by the “fame” that sparkled around him at his birth, he translated it into life completely differently. One can see the eagerness for “fame” in the bellicosity of his regime.  One can see this in the glory that The Sun King created in his court and country.  All this from the glimpse of heaven found at his birth.  For him, “fame” or, in French, “gloire” – glory, the glory of the gates of heavens opened up in his birth vision – did indeed transcend the conventional boundaries of death and life.

His memoirs go on:

Love of glory has the same subtleties as the most tender passions. … In exercising a totally divine function here on earth, we must appear incapable of turmoils which could debase it.[9]

He obviously felt that his presence on earth was borrowed from the truer glory of his heavenly home, and felt a responsibility to recreate that glory.

        Louis became King at four years old, the country actually controlled by Mazarin, the Prime Minister chosen by his mother.  When Mazarin died, Louis, throwing off the tradition that would have kept him well-dressed, well-fed, and in the corner, took the reins of government, setting up a dictatorship by divine right.  He viewed himself as God’s representative on earth.

Look, however, at how this desire to recreate the fact experienced by him at his birth manifested itself.  He tried to control everything, from court etiquette which he elaborated tremendously, to troop movements in the field, to road building, to theological disputes, to fashion in dress and behavior. He lured all the squabbling nobles to his court, with threats of confiscation of property.  He corrupted them with gambling, emphasis on favors and privileges, and endless ostentatious entertainments where alcohol flowed freely.  The nobles were entrapped in an image of heaven, unable to return to their homes, many succumbing to alcoholism and sexual excesses.

The Palace at Versailles was meant to evidence this heaven on earth, with its thousands of paintings and sculptures, the very gardens setting a standard for Nature tamed and made beautiful.  Do we see in its geometric hedges hints of what Louis knew existed in the heavens?

Thus the notion of “sum” can be broken down into its parts, all the pieces that add up to the sum.  Louis wanted to control every detail, every part. And he wanted to be on top, the “consummation” of all the parts that he controlled.  Who else could claim that he participated in the ascension of Mary, seeing heaven open up in its splendor – his birth Image?  Who else could say, extending the birth Image, that Mary had held his infant self in her arms in heaven, as seen by Saint Fiacre? 

You can see here how birth into this Image could create extraordinary beauty and also a distortion of reality.  At the human level, this earth isn’t the same as heaven, isn’t filled with singing and tremulous angels, isn’t permeated with glory, glory, glory.  Louis XIV had the resources to try to make earth into heaven, and in the end made an extraordinary appearance of truth, with a very compelling dark side.  Having a glorious birth Image can thus have challenging side effects.

Each biography – Dvorák and Louis XIV – complements the other, so that we can perceive how the Image coming from the Sun, imprinted by the “consummation” of Mary, works on the individual life.  When a modern person is born into this degree (or this degree appears on one of the four arms of the Solar Cross related to the birth), then a study of historical personalities can help one discover the ways to realize the terrific resource coming from one’s birth.

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For more details of how these Images came to be, please read: "Origins of the Images of the Oracle of the Solar Crosses"

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About The Sun's Gift CD

Dr. Tresemer has chosen the mode of reading an Image because it elicits ones imaginative mind more effectively. When you hear an Image, and it's Commentary, you open to the Sun's Gift in the same way that humans have heard stories around the campfire for ages. Dr. Tresemer has found over and over again that the Solar Cross Images have a deep connection with the drive and coloring of your whole life, and are meant to be savored. Some of the Images are challenging, some completely sweet.

The Sun's Gift is a two CD set. Each Image is followed by extensive spoken commentaries that deepen the details of the Image to assist you in finding life themes and in discovering how the image relates to your life. Directions for listening to the CD with examples and important background material are given on the first CD.

Get ready to experience the Image that shone through from the heavens to the Earth when you were born.

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