These first three lectures provide an important foundation for all that follows. What Steiner offers is actually a kind of Goethean phenomenology of karma. Two kinds of fundamentally different human encounters are read as archetypal phenomena, Urphänomene in the sense of Goethe's science, which are transparent in turn to vast cosmic perspectives: the Moon as the portal of the past, the portal revealing cosmic necessity leading us together; and the Sun as the portal of the future, where we can act in freedom. Steiner also underscores the importance of the Christmas Conference, and issues a resounding call for anthroposophical life and activity. Because the German original is available only in editions prior to 1970, I have appended it to the volume.