Rudolph Steiner directed Dr. Felix Peipers to arrange fifteen images-thirteen images from nine of Raphael’s paintings, plus a Donatello relief and a Michelangelo sculpture. Contemplating these fifteen images in the given sequence has a remarkable effect upon the human soul.
One interpretation of the effect on the life- and soul body of the human being can be found in the research of Brian Gray in his essay “Discovering the Zodiac in the Raphael Madonna Series”. He discovers a pentagram in the ascending of the child from the right foot of the Madonna to her forehead, its descent to the left foot, its ascent to the right hand, crossing to the left hand, descending back to the right foot. This all mirrored in the eye of the observer. Gray starts this imaginative journey with the second image dedicated to Pisces and ends with the fourteenth image at Aries. The first image of the “still heavenly” Sistine Madonna and the last image of the Transfigured Christ frame the twelve, with the head of the transfigured Christ (picture ten) felt by Gray to be placed in the heart region of the observer. Gray’s findings are published in book format by wynstonpress. (Some readers mentioned that there would be no coloured images in this publication. Sets of Madonna series post cards are available). The article can also be found in the “Journal for Star Wisdom 2013”.
Another book to mention is “Christopher Bamford, Healing Madonnas”