Monthly Archives: July 2016

I live in the Open Palm of Strangers…

July 15, 2016Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Uncategorized~hag

15 July 2016 – ASTRO-WEATHER –The southern skies host a Waxing Gibbous Moon, accompanied by the ringed-planet Saturn just below & a little left. Farther, but directly below the Moon is the red star Antares, while well to their right is the rusty-orange Mars. This group will be even closer together on August 11th

***

“What is presented here can be useful to those who wish to follow the path of mankind’s spiritual development…There is no other way towards a world history in light of anthroposophy than to engage with concrete karmic facts” ~Rudolf Steiner

484 BC – Dedication of the Temple of Castor & Pollux in ancient Rome

1099 –Christian soldiers take the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem lead by Godfrey of Bouillon who became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He refused the title of King, however, as he believed that the true King of Jerusalem was Christ, preferring the title of Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre. He is also known as the “Baron of the Holy Sepulchre” & the “Crusader King”

1149 – The reconstructed Church of the Holy Sepulchre is consecrated in Jerusalem

1274 – Feast Day of Bonaventure, Italian bishop & saint called the “Seraphic Doctor”

1381 – English Priest John Ball, a leader in the Peasants’ Revolt, is hanged, drawn & quartered in the presence of King Richard II of England whose posthumous reputation was shaped by Shakespeare, in the play Richard II

1606 – Birthday of Rembrandt

1741 –Aleksei Chirikov a Russian navigator & captain sights land in Southeast Alaska. He sends men ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to visit Alaska

1799 – The Rosetta Stone is found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard during Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign

1815 –Napoleon Bonaparte surrenders aboard HMS Bellerophon

1823 – A fire destroys the ancient Basilica of Saint Paul

1834 – The Spanish Inquisition is officially disbanded after nearly 356 years

1904 – Deathday of Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright & short story writer

1929 – Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Austrian author, poet, and playwright

1955 – Eighteen Nobel laureates sign the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, later co-signed by thirty-four others

1971 – The United Red Army is founded in Japan

1979 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter gives his so-called malaise speech, where he characterizes the greatest threat to the country as “this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation” but in which he never uses the word malaise

“…In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning….

I’m asking you for your good and for your nation’s security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel…. I have seen the strength of America in the inexhaustible resources of our people. In the days to come, let us renew that strength in the struggle for an energy-secure nation. . .”

***

Willam Blake

~i am a child

the seed in every thing

the rhythm of flowers

the old story that never ends…

i live in the open palm of strangers

as i reach down & pull up

song…

~hag

***

Henry Clark

And so today I leave for Dornach to be part of the International Faust Festival at the Goetheanum! Which has inspired today’s offering:

The first part of “Faust” displays the mood of a man who is tired of material existence, who suspects there are deep mysteries to life, but can’t penetrate them. Then we see how Faust lets himself be influenced by those signs which surround him, yet he is not ripe enough to really feel this spiritual environment. Still he suspects that the planet Earth is not simply the physical globe described by natural science, it has within it a soul, just like him.

“In the currents of life, and action’s storm,

I float and wave

With billowy motion!

Birth and the grave,

A limitless ocean,

A constant weeding,

With change still rife,

A restless heaving,

A glowing life —

Thus time’s whirring loom unceasing I ply,

And weave the life-garment of deity.”

Goethe presents to us a Faust that is incomplete, a human being that must strive ever higher, just as Goethe did when he traveled south on his famous journey to Italy. Goethe, like Faust, makes the effort to know the spirit behind nature, this is shown in his work before the completion of the second part of “Faust”; & of course, his progress is revealed in the second part. Most folks have no idea of the eternal wisdom embodied in this second part, a wisdom to which Goethe could only reach in the evening of his life, leaving it as testament behind him. In response to this blindness on the part of society Goethe said:

“My Faust some people praise

And what not else

That I in writings phrase

To their advantage tells.

The oldest tag-and-rag

Pleases the pit;

The rabble cannot see

There’s more in it.”

After Goethe has introduced his Faust to Mephistopheles & the beginnings of his spiritual striving, he takes us thru the Gretchen-tragedy, which then leads Faust out into the great, exterior world — the world of the Emperors Court. And then into the true spiritual world of the super-sensible.

Goethe shows us in the second part the essence of the human soul — of human evolution. We see how occupied he is with Mephistopheles — that spirit who plays a part in everything Faust undertakes. But only in the second part, where Faust is to be introduced into the world of Spirit, can we realize the actual role Mephistopheles plays.

After Faust has passed through the events in the Imperial Court, he wants to meet the spirit of Helena, who lived many centuries ago. She has to be found for Faust. But that is impossible in the physical world; so Faust must descend into the spiritual world. Mephistopheles has the key to that world, but cannot enter there himself. He can describe it -a word is sounded & Faust must descend to the Mothers.

Who or what are the “Mothers”? This could take life-times to describe, but in a nutshell, the Mothers are, for spiritual science, what we meet when our spiritual eyes are opened. When we enter the world of spirit we merge with the essence from which all things are born.

Mephistopheles represents the kind of Ahrimanic intelligence able to understand only the physical, though aware of the existence of a spiritual realm, he is unable to enter it. Mephistopheles stands at the side of Faust, just like how today he stands by the materialistic thinker, saying: ‘Pshaw, there is nothing real in the ‘spiritual’ – you are only dreaming!’ To this the Spiritual investigator must say: “In your nothing I hope to find the All.” These two powers stand in opposition internally.

When Faust descends into the realm of the Mothers — the spiritual world; he succeeds in bringing up with him the spirit of Helena. But he is not ripe enough to unite this spirit with his own soul. He can only embrace the archetype of Helena with sensual passion. This sets him back. That is the fate of every one who seeks to approach the Spiritual World harboring personal, egotistical feelings; they are repelled, like Faust. We must first mature- learning the real relationship between the 3 members of the human being’s nature. That is the lesson Faust must learn -to truly embrace the archetype of Helena -the immortal, the eternal, which passes from life to life, from one incarnation to the other. Only then can he become united with the immortal spirit.

In this way we can see how Faust is led by the Homunculus to the classical Walpurgisnight, to begin to receive the true teaching of evolution. Homunculus receives the counsel: You must begin with the lowest kingdom & rise higher & higher. The human soul is, in the first place, sent to the mineral kingdom. There we are informed that we have to pass through the vegetable kingdom: There the soul gathers all the natural elements to develop further.

Only after that can we hope to see Eros, the spirit of love, approaching us -after the soul has formed the body from out of the kingdoms of nature. Body, soul & spirit are then united. The soul of the Homunculus, with its newly organized body, comes into union with the spirit of Helena who now, in the third act of the second part, can appear to us, incarnate. The teaching of reincarnation is artistically & practically interspersed in the second part of Faust. One cannot unite with Helena by approaching her with stormy passion, we must experience the mysteries of existence in reality to be able to pass thru to rebirth.

Faust unites with Helena ie. the spiritual world. A child is the result, but not an ordinary child, it is Euphorion, who is as pure & true as he is poetic. He shows what comes to life in our soul when it unites with the spiritual world in its evolution -a moment arrives which has profound meaning for the soul. We feel how Euphorion, the spiritual child of the true spiritual seeker, sinks down into the realm of spirit, which Faust cannot, as yet, quite enter. This can be an experienced by the spiritual investigator as losing or leaving behind a child born of that realm when returning to everyday life. “Leave me in realms forlorn, Mother, not all alone!” — the voice of the spiritual child calling to our soul as its mother.

But this soul must go on – severed from all that is only personal desire. As long as there remains one selfish aim, one tinge of self-will, we will fail to perceive the spiritual world. Until we can say as Faust did “that now I stand upon the free foundation; I will endeavor to gain from nature everything that I can use for the benefit of others.”

Yet, as he gazes at the hut of Philemon & Baucis, it shows what can happen when his false ego, which wishes to selfishly experience the pleasure of an unobstructed view, is not yet under control -The spirit of evil once more approaches him. The hut is destroyed by fire. Now he meets the anxiety which greets anyone still harboring selfish aspirations, preventing an ascent into the spiritual world. This is shown to us by Faust’s blindness in old age; his physical sight has gone, but now he can see the spiritual world. Night penetrates deeper & deeper, but within, is a bright light, capable of illuminating the world in which the soul lives between death & birth — the realm of the Mothers. Only now can Faust commence his journey into the spiritual world, so beautifully presented by his ascension.

In the chorus mysticus, Goethe shows what Faust has achieved in the time of his striving, when he was 1^st sick of science & turned away from it, till he gained spiritual perception. Here condensed in a few words, is the key to all the world mysteries -how everything temporal is only a symbol for the eternal. What the physical eye can see is only a glyph for the spiritual, the immortal, a sign pointing to the knowledge of reincarnation.

In Goethe final words, we touch that Great Fact, that we must seek the Eternal-Feminine, which aspires to union; to become one with the Divine-Spiritual. “The ineffable wrought in love.” That is the great secret expressed by Goethe in the words:

“All that is changeable

Is but reflected;

The unattainable

Here is effected;

Human comparison

Here is passed by;

The Eternal-Feminine

Draws us an high”

With this Goethe completed his life’s work. It was only after his death that it was given to humanity, & we will need to concentrate deeply, with the help of Spiritual Science, in order to penetrate the mysteries of this powerful work.

Sourced from a Lecture given by Rudolf Steiner given in Strassburg, on January 23rd, 1910 -‘Goethe’s Faust’ from the Point of View of Spiritual Science

Until my return Aug. 15^th

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Between Peace & Noise

July 14, 2016Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

14 July 2016 – ASTRO-WEATHER – The waxing gibbous Moon forms a triangle with Mars & Saturn tonight. The Moon stands highest to Mars’s upper left once darkness falls; Saturn is to the left of the Red Planet

Bastille Day

1789 – French Revolution began with Parisians stormed the Bastille prison & released the seven prisoners inside

1798 – The Sedition Act becomes law in the United States making it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the United States government

1801 – Birthday of Johannes Peter Müller a German physiologist, comparative anatomist, ichthyologist, & herpetologist, known not only for his discoveries but also for his ability to synthesize knowledge

1853 – Opening of the first major US world’s fair, the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in New York City

1862 – Birthday of Gustav Klimt an Austrian symbolist painter, one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. His work was the subject of controversy that culminated when the paintings he completed around 1900 for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticized as pornographic. He subsequently accepted no more public commissions, but achieved a new success with the paintings of his “golden phase,” many of which include gold leaf.

1874 – The Chicago Fire burns down 47 acres of the city, destroying 812 buildings, killing 20

1877 – The Great Railroad Strike begins in Martinsburg, West Virginia, US, when Baltimore & Ohio Railroad workers have their wages cut for the second time in a year

1896 – Birthday of José Buenaventura Durruti Dumange who played an influential role during the Spanish Revolution & is remembered as a hero in the Anarchist movement. “It is we [the workers] who built these palaces and cities, here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers. We can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. There is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. […] That world is growing in this minute.” — Buenaventura Durruti. Over a half million people filled the streets at his funeral. It was the last large-scale public demonstration of anarchist strength of numbers during the bitter & bloody civil war

1912 – Birthday of Woody Guthrie, singer-songwriter & guitarist

1933 – Gleichschaltung: In Germany, all political parties are outlawed except the Nazi Party.

1933 – The Nazi eugenics begins

1957 – Rawya Ateya becomes the first female parliamentarian in the Arab world

1958 – Iraqi Revolution: In Iraq the monarchy is overthrown by popular forces led by Abd al-Karim Qasim, who becomes the nation’s new leader.

1960 – Jane Goodall arrives at the Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania to begin her famous study of chimpanzees in the wild

1965 – The Mariner 4 flyby of Mars takes the first close-up photos of another plane

1976 – Capital punishment is abolished in Canada

1986 – Deathday of Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges, an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet & translator, a key figure in Spanish-language literature. His compilations of short stories were interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, & religion.

Borges’ works have contributed to philosophical literature & the fantasy genre -The first to use the term magical realism. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, & Virgil.

He became completely blind by the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination

2000 – A powerful solar flare, later named the Bastille Day event, causes a geomagnetic storm on Earth

2003 – In an effort to discredit U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who had written an article critical of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Washington Post columnist Robert Novak reveals that Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame is a CIA “operative”

2015 – NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft became the first space mission to explore Pluto

***

Jill Hardcastle

~To know

The difference

Between Peace & Noise

To re-member the Moon

To see in every blade

Of grass

The rising Sun

To meet the Stars

In the eyes of the other

To be faithful

To the immortality in every mortal

Makes this moment sacred…

~hag

***

Those who have been reading these writings know that I have begun a modern study in the unveiling of true history thru karmic relationships. Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul is my inspiration. The calendar is a meditative path that shows how the individual soul’s path is affected by the unfolding of the seasons seen at their deepest esoteric level. This is how Steiner described it:

“I have tried to draw up verses for meditation, the effect of which will enable the soul gradually to discover in itself and in its own experiences the connection with the great cosmic constellations. These formulae for meditation do in all reality lead the soul out of its narrow confines to experience of the heavens. These fifty-two verses will enable the soul to find access to happenings in the great universe, and thereby to experience the Spirits working in the onward flow of Time. But if you ponder on the texts of the verses in the Calendar, you will discern an element of Timelessness, in rhythmic alternation; an element that is experienced inwardly by the human being, the laws of which run parallel to those of Time in the outer world.”

The calendar’s history is itself fascinating. It started on Easter Sunday, in the week from April 7 to 13, 1912. The shift from January to April was made in honor of the idea that the first year was 33 AD – the resurrection, not year 1 of the birth of Jesus. The date of 33 AD as the birth of the “I” is crucial, because it reveals an important relationship between microcosm & macrocosm, in which Easter plays a central role. After that time it was possible for the human being to awake to the possibility the “I” within, because the Christ had united with the Earth.

In the Calendar was the first time Steiner referred to the Mystery of Golgotha as the birth of the “I.” This is why on the cover the characters “J C H” (Jesus Christ) appear, which also stand for the German Ich; which means ‘I’, & below them is the inscription Geburt (born). It reads “The year 1879 after the birth of the ‘I.’” In effect, the year 1912 equals 1879 plus 33.” Steiner wrote this at a time in which he could not yet speak openly of the Archangel Michael & the new Michael age.

The preface to the first calendar was entitled “What is Intended,” & it was followed by a weekly calendar with drawings of the zodiac signs, which Imma von Eckhardstein had executed, following Steiner’s sketches. These new signs were not meant to represent the classical zodiacal constellations, but rather the spiritual forces active in the cosmos. In addition to the twelve zodiacal images, also included were five images appearing at different times of the calendar year, representing the five great epochs of Earth evolution; a lunar calendar following the ephemeris; & a daily calendar with commemoration of historical events & memorial days of great individualities – Birthdays & Deathdays.

Among the individualities commemorated are Christian saints; biblical individuals (Enoch, Gaspar, Melchior, Balthasar, Abel, Seth); historical figures (Byron, Lessing, Galileo, Michelangelo, artists, philosophers, thinkers, & so forth). It was interesting that individuals that Steiner did not exalt (for example, Roger Bacon & Charles Darwin) were also listed.

The first calendar was met, in Steiner’s words, with “mockery and derision.” The major unease lay in the fact that the year would have been variable & of unequal length. To that objection, Steiner responded that for anthroposophists, it would be important to observe the year from Easter to Easter. He commented in a lecture specifically about the calendar, “In what is unequal there is life; in what is uniform and fixed, here is the impress of death.”

Great importance was placed by Steiner in publishing new calendars yearly, as well as working artistically with them. The 1918 edition appeared in the “Colorful Waldorf Astoria Booklets” – tiny books packaged with the cigarettes & intended for soldiers in the trenches. It also appeared in a series of books edited by Herman Hesse for Prisoners of war, in a text by Steiner called “The Real Experience of the Human Riddle through the Spirit.”

Karl König, who wrote much about the Calendar, made drawings for the weeks. Laura Summer, Sohie Takata, & Ella Lapointe have worked artistically with the Calendar, & we can too.

Tomorrow dear friends will be my last post until mid-August when I will return to the internet.

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

On a deep red rose, The angry lion trod…

July 13, 2016Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

13 July 2016 – ASTRO-WEATHER –The Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower gets underway this week. Although the shower doesn’t peak until the end of July, you should start to see some meteors in the hours before dawn. The best time to look is between 3 & 4 a.m. after the Moon has set & before twilight intrudes. To tell a Southern Delta Aquarid meteor from a random dust particle burning up in Earth’s atmosphere, trace the streak of light’s path backward. A shower meteor will appear to originate from the constellation Aquarius the Water-bearer.

The Moon reaches apogee, the farthest point in its orbit around Earth, at 12:24 am CDT

The Big Dipper, high in the northwest after dark, is now turning around to “scoop up water” through the evenings of summer & early fall

***

100 BC – Gaius Julius Caesar – “The Gallic Wars”

1298 – Deathday of Blessed Jacobus de Varagine, an Italian chronicler & archbishop of Genoa. He was the author, of Legenda Aurea, the Golden Legend, a collection of hagiographies of the legendary lives of saints of the Middle Ages. The Golden Legend is the source of the Rose Cross Meditation that Rudolf Steiner often quoted.

1527 – Birthday of John Dee, English-Welsh mathematician, astronomer, & astrologer & occultist

1727 – The founding of The Herrnhuter Brotherhood, The Moravian Church – Unitas Fratrum – Unity of the Brethren – predating the Protestant Reformation by a century, it was really the 1^st Protestant Church, with its heritage dating back to the Bohemian Reformation in the fifteenth century. It places a high value on ecumenism, personal piety, music -communio sub utraque specie, married priests, & eliminating indulgences & the idea of Purgatory. The Church’s emblem is the Lamb of God (Agnus Dei) with the flag of victory, surrounded by the Latin inscription: Vicit agnus noster, eum sequamur “Our Lamb has conquered, let us follow Him”

1863 – New York City draft riots: violent demonstrations that were the culmination of working-class discontent with new laws passed by Congress to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil War. The riots remain the largest civil & racial insurrection in American history, aside from the Civil War itself

1878 – Treaty of Berlin: The European powers redraw the map of the Balkans. Serbia, Montenegro & Romania become completely independent of the Ottoman Empire

1889 – Deathday of Robert Hamerling an Austrian poet. Rudolf Steiner gave his funeral address. http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA154/English/AP1990/19140426p01.html

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica characterizes Hamerling as one of the most remarkable poets of the modern Austrian school, describing his imagination as rich & his poems as full of life & color. In his most popular poem, Ahasver in Rom (1866), the emperor Nero is the central figure. Among his other works, Venus im Exil (1858); Der König von Sion (1869), characterized as a masterpiece; Die sieben Todsünden (1872) Blätter im Winde (1887); Homunculus (1888); Amor und Psyche (1882).

His novel, Aspasia (1876), a finely-drawn description of the Periclean age, & his tragedy Danton und Robespierre (1870), showed Hamerling’s genius.

In Karmic Relationships Vol. 2, lecture 6, Steiner describes him as a pupil of Plato in an earlier incarnation.

1923 – The Hollywood Sign is officially dedicated. It originally reads “Hollywoodland ” but the four last letters are dropped after renovation in 1949

1943 – Battle of Kursk was the final defeat of the German army. With the Soviet line at Kursk protruding into enemy territory, the Germans attempted to attack from different directions. Given time to reposition their defenses, the Soviets held off the offensive before launching a counterattack. Facing the American invasion of Sicily & the threat of an Italian collapse, Hitler decided to call off operations at Kursk, its failure shifting the balance of power.

1963 – Deathday of Albert Steffen a poet, painter, dramatist, essayist,& novelist. He joined the Anthroposophical Society in 1912 & became its president after the death of its founder, Rudolf Steiner, in 1925. Steffen was chief editor of the society’s journal, Das Goetheanum, from 1921-1963

His earliest works, predating his encounter with anthroposophy, already manifest a spiritual awareness. His later works, which reflect a vision of the world permeated by metaphysical powers of good & evil, draw on a wide range of esoteric European & Asian traditions

1973 – Alexander Butterfield reveals the existence of the “Nixon tapes” to the special Senate committee investigating the Watergate break-in.

2013 – George Zimmerman is found not guilty in the shooting of Trayvon Martin

2013 – Typhoon Soulik kills at least nine people & affects more than 160 million in East China &Taiwan.

2016 – Theresa May succeeds David Cameron as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; she is the second female Prime Minister, after Margaret Thatcher

***

James Fosdike

The Lion and the Rose by Robert Hamerling

On a deep red rose

The angry lion trod

His paw caught fast the thorn

Of this delicate bud.

His paw swelled large;

In angry pain he died.

Refreshed, the red rose drank

The early morning dew.

Be the delicate ever so delicate,

The rough ever so rough,

That which is fragile, gentle, pure —

Beauty, triumphs over all.

~ Letzte Grüsse aus Stiftinghaus, vol. 15 in Hamerling’s Collected Works

***

And so this is what came to me this morning:

On his sixty-third birthday Rudolf Steiner gave the following meditation to Dr. Ita Wegman:

“Hearts interpret Karma

When hearts learn to read

The Word,

Which creates in

Human Life;

When hearts learn to

Speak the Word

Which creates in

The Human Being”

When Michaelic thinking has truly been activated, intelligence will stream through the hearts of human beings & that it will be connected to the same divine spiritual forces that helped to create humanity in the beginnings of time.

For spiritually active pupils in the Michaelic stream, the heart becomes: An eye for self-cognition, the realization of the true self as eternal being; it also becomes the eye of the Ego-sense, the true ‘I’ – which perceives the ‘other’ in their true being, also, an eye of cognition for supersensible beings & for the etheric Christ Himself -protected & cherished in the Michaelic mystery-culture of will; it will also become possible to perceive the karma of others as well as our own karmic chain.

It has become possible for souls connected to Michael to be engaged in a goal-oriented schooling for initiation to enter into closer connection with the hierarchies & the etheric Christ, who reveals Himself today as an angel. It is Michael’s aim that the spiritual schooling will lead to heart-knowledge & that the etheric eye of the heart will become an organ of cognition.

We read the following in the Michael-Letters:

“The Christ-force imprints human imaginations into the cosmic ether.”

“That which man experiences as strength of conscious imagination becomes world content.”

“Hearts begin to have thoughts, that is the new way of thinking with the heart.”

“The newly developed heart-organ slowly transforms into an eye or better a sensing-heart-eye-organ.”

“Everyone who strives in the light of spiritual science and connects himself with the creative World-Logos through heartfelt thoughts, sooner or later will learn to read Karma. By doing so he adds to the substance of the etheric-youth or angel-being through which the etheric Christ reveals Himself today.”

We experience our Self in our eternal being. When our heart-sense becomes a cognitive organ, we feel as if our heart is being transplanted into the Sun, as if we go with the sun, the sun is in us, belonging to us. The Sun becomes our eye, our ear, as well as our organ of warmth. “We stand within the light, we touch spirit-beings with our light-organs.” Then we not only feel ourselves within the Sun but we perceive ourselves “on the other side of the Sun”. We experience the world within our being, previously it was outside of ourselves -around us. Rudolf Steiner tells us it is an experience which we go through unconsciously during sleep.

It is the powerful esoteric call to each pupil of Michael, to help in the creation of a new Sun-Earth. This is the way in which the secret of the Grail lives – as Christian Morgenstern says: “I lift my heart to you as a true vessel of the Grail …”

It is the experience of being totally imbued with the spirit of eternity, which fills the receiving Soul-Grail in a cultic spirit event at the Sun-altar. Here Spirit & Soul truly unite. It is the Michaelic path to the heavenly city of the New Jerusalem.

See you there

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

“Selflessness Becomes Catharsis”

July 12, 2016Insight, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

12 July 2016 – ASTRO-WEATHER – The moon is waxing. Morning stars are Neptune & Uranus. Evening stars are Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars & Saturn.

As soon as it’s dark, look just north (upper right) of Jupiter for Sigma Leonis, Leo’s hind foot. Tonight they’re the closest they will appear.

The constellation Sagittarius is found due south at midnight. It is shaped like a teapot, its spout to the right. The picture was imagined as an archer to the Greeks, aiming an arrow at Scorpio, seen to the right of the teapot

***

Mattia Preti

Feast day of Saint Veronica. The name “Veronica” itself is a Latinisation of Berenice a Macedonian name, meaning “bearer of victory”. The Latin word for “true” or “authentic” happens to be vera, the theory emerged that the name itself is derived from the Latin phrase “true image”, vera icon. In the 13th-century text & also in some later sources the term Veronica was used for the veil, not the person. The Encyclopædia Britannica says this about the legend:

Eusebius in his Historia Ecclesiastica tells how at Caesarea Philippi lived the woman whom Christ healed of an issue of blood (Matthew 9:20-22). In the West she was identified with Martha of Bethany; in the East she was called Berenike, or Beronike, the name appearing in as early a work as the “Acta Pilati”, the most ancient form of which goes back to the fourth century. The fanciful derivation of the name Veronica from the words Vera Icon (eikon) “true image” dates back to the “Otia Imperialia” that says: “Est ergo Veronica pictura Domini vera” (translated: “The Veronica is, therefore, a true picture of the Lord.”)

486 BC – Birthday of Darius I, the third king of the Persian Empire. Also called Darius the Great, he ruled the empire at its peak.

He organized a new monetary system, along with making Aramaic the official language of the empire. He also put the empire in better standing by building roads & introducing standard weights & measure.

Darius is mentioned in the Biblical books of Haggai, Zechariah, Daniel, & Ezra–Nehemiah.

100 B.C – Birthday of Julius Caesar

1493 – Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle, one of the best-documented early printed books, is published. Latin scholars refer to it as Liber Chronicarum (Book of Chronicles). German speakers refer to it as Die Schedelsche Weltchronik (Schedel’s World History)

1562 – Fray Diego de Landa, acting Bishop of Yucatán, burns the sacred books of the Maya

1580 – The Ostrog Bible, one of the early printed Bibles in a Slavic language, is published

1804 –Alexander Hamilton dies a day after being shot in a duel with Aaron Burr, the VP of the US.

1806 – Sixteen German imperial states leave the Holy Roman Empire & form the Confederation of the Rhine.

1817 – Birthday of Henry David Thoreau

1849 – Deathday of Dolley Madison, wife of James Madison, 4th First Lady of the United States

1854 – Birthday of George Eastman, founded Eastman Kodak

1864 – Birthday of scientist George Washington Carver

1884 – Birthday of Louis B. Mayer

Modigliani

1884 – Birthday of Amedeo Modigliani, Italian painter &sculptor

1895 – Birthday of Buckminster Fuller, architect & engineer, designed the Montreal Biosphère

1895 – Birthday of Oscar Hammerstein II, director, producer, &songwriter

1904 – Birthday of Chilean writer Pablo Neruda

1917 – The Bisbee Deportation occurs as vigilantes kidnap & deport nearly 1,300 striking miners from Bisbee, Arizona

1918 – The Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Kawachi blows up at Shunan, western Honshu, Japan, killing at least 621

1920 – The Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty is signed, by which Soviet Russia recognizes the independence of Lithuania.

1933 – A minimum wage of 40 cents an hour was established in the U.S

1941 – Moscow was bombed by the German Luftwaffe for the first time

1943 – German & Soviet forces engage in one of the largest armored engagements of all time

1948 – Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion orders the expulsion of Palestinians from the towns of Lod & Ramla

1962 – The Rolling Stones perform their first concert, at the Marquee Club in London.

1967 – The Newark riots begin in Newark, New Jersey

1973 – A fire destroys the entire sixth floor of the National Personnel Records Center of the United States

1984, Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale named U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, D-N.Y., as his running mate.

1990, Boris Yeltsin quit the Soviet Communist Party, saying he wanted to concentrate on his duties as president of the Russian republic

2000 – Russia launched the Zvezda after two years of delays. The module was built to be the living quarters for the International Space Station

***

James Christensen

~Feeling One with the Ancient Sojourner…Destined

To walk a 1000 years

Until I arrive…

@mySelf…

Let the red sash that cradles the hips of Isis

Knot the ends of life & dream divine

For I am

Water & dust walking –

Crimson magic courses thru me…

‎Yes I am

An oar made ready…

Like water, adaptable

I follow mySelf

Flowing on…

Come friend, let’s dance along the way .:.

~hag

***

Sulamith-Wulfing

July = “Selflessness Becomes Catharsis”

The fullness of the resplendent Summer with its lush, colorful gardens & flowering meadows, undulating like heat waves in a dream over the earth, embraced in a mantle of warmth. I give myself up to the motherly sun, in order to become, a sun myself. My soul a flaming glow blazing full of yearning for the open stillness of the wide starry sky.

“Lose yourself to find yourself”

Today too on my natal return, these words sound out to me from those heavenly heights. But how, after the ‘I’ has made its way into us, can we lose ourselves in order to find ourselves again in the ‘I’ of the World?

Perhaps it’s by sacrificing our intellectual knowledge to the spirit of the world! This is the secret of the Summer mysteries: the transformation of the intellectual knowledge of the head, into the warmth-bearing substance of the will!

Seen from the aspect of biography, this turning point, is mirrored after the middle of life, where the downward curve of life sets in – understood in July’s glyph of the crab, symbol of the constellation Cancer.

We are called to give up the armoring of materialism, which is a danger that lucks in the summer feeling. Only when the crab reveals its spiritual secret can it bestow its wisdom to us.

This secret is transformation. The old & worn out reaches its completion, which is expressed in the involving spiral of the shell. – This narrowing passage of the spiral leads to an end, from which there is no escape – And then we see that the new beginning of the evolving spiral is separated from the involving spiral by an abyss.

How can we cross this abyss? Only by a courageous leap over the void! This archetypal motif always appears when what is old & exhausted reaches its end, & the new approaches, which can only be achieved thru new soul forces.

Today too this turning point, not only in the wheel of the year, but of world events before us -This stream of the past, that carries the seed of death within it – This stream of materialistic understanding & formation of time, armored within a rigid structure, can only be overcome by a courageous leap. For from that rigid structure no new seeds of the future can emerge. These seeds must be developed by a completely new set of soul forces, into which streams the light of true spiritual knowledge.

The time of summer is especially appropriate for cultivating within us, with warmth, these new concept-seeds of thought, in order to shape new imaginations with which we can approach the metamorphic processes of nature. Thinking in pictures means following intuitively this cosmic transformation processes of nature, for She Herself, the great World Mother, is woven out of cosmic imaginations. Thru this we form in our souls what we see in nature right now: the ripening of fruits, the fruitification of involution, in order to bear the seeds of summer thru the winter.

This turning point of the year can stand before us a guiding motif:

“Take into your soul, in Selfless-Devotion, the rich pictorial language of outer nature, & through it, try to solve the riddle of the world pictures of cosmic happenings. Through this you walk the path of alchemical transformation which leads to catharsis (purification). For catharsis means to be ready to humbly lay aside the proud thinking which has hardened & encrusted itself in modern intellectuality, in order to sacrifice it on the altar of the world spirit, so that it can transform itself into warming forces of will & imaginative world pictures. In doing this, we accomplish the demand of our age, which requires this sacrifice of us. And at the same time we accomplish the inner purification of our souls, which only in breaking through the rigid armour of intellectual thought can experience resurrection in the realm of creative world thoughts!”

“We cultivate thinking & make it mature through developing qualities which seem not to be related at all to thinking – through devotion & insight – not so much through logical exercises, but when we observe this & that, & use processes in nature to penetrate into hidden mysteries. It is through devotion to questions of nature & humanity, through the attempt to understand complicated people, through an intensification of attention, that we make our thinking astute.

Little cultivation of insight & devotion makes us grumpy hypochondriacs. What is so very necessary for thinking does not at all depend on thinking. All self-will, all self-seeking, has a destructive effect on thinking…Devotion, willingness for sacrifice with respect to the most insignificant objects & occurrences, has a favorable effect on one’s thinking & one’s mood.” ~Rudolf Steiner GA 130, lecture 2

& tomorrow’s another day…

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Today I am…a goatherd in lions clothing

July 11, 2016Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

11 July 2016 – ASTRO-WEATHER – You can find the First Quarter Moon in the southwest as darkness falls, then watch as it sinks toward the western horizon, where it sets shortly before 1am. The half-lit Moon spends the night among the background stars of Virgo the Maiden, some 5° north of that constellation’s brightest star, Spica.

Venus reaches perihelion- its closest point to the Sun at 1pm.

Saturn lies nearly due south as darkness falls this week. It is easily the brightest planet in its host constellation, Ophiuchus the Serpent-bearer.

***

472 – After being besieged in Rome by his own generals, Western Roman Emperor Anthemius is captured in St. Peter’s Basilica & put to death

1405 – Ming admiral Zheng He sets sail to explore the world for the first time

1742 – A papal decree was issued condemning the disciplining actions of the Jesuits in China

1750 – Halifax, Nova Scotia is almost completely destroyed by fire

1767 – Birthday of John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States

1786 – Morocco agreed to stop attacking American ships in the Mediterranean for a payment of $10,000

1801 – French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons makes his first comet discovery. In the next 27 years he discovers another 36 comets, more than any other person in history

1804 – A duel occurs in which the Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr mortally wounds former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton

1895 – Brothers Auguste & Louis Lumière demonstrate movie film technology to scientists

1921 – Former President of the United States William Howard Taft is sworn in as 10th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the only person ever to hold both offices

1937 – Deathday of George Gershwin

1947 – The Exodus 1947 was a ship that carried Jewish holocaust survivors from France to Palestine. The British Royal Navy seized the ship & deported all its passengers back to Europe

1962 – First transatlantic satellite television transmission

1962 – Project Apollo: NASA announces lunar orbit rendezvous as the means to land astronauts on the Moon, & return them to Earth

1973 – Varig Flight 820 crashes near Paris, killing 123 of the 134 on board. In response, the FAA bans smoking on flights

1977 – Martin Luther King, Jr. is posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom

1979 – America’s first space station, Skylab, is destroyed as it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean

1995 – The Srebrenica genocide – killing more than 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks during the Bosnian War

2012 – Astronomers announce the discovery of Styx, the fifth moon of Pluto

“…Pluto is a controversial planet as it is a newcomer, an outsider to the classic solar system. Willi Sucher describes the outer planets in this way: They are something like bystanders and try to speak to human beings about the invisible worlds, of the spiritual worlds of the divine hierarchies, of all that which is of an absolutely nonmaterial, even non-spatial, nature. If these messages are not received by human beings consciously, they can easily wreak “destruction” and thereby bring home the messages of the temporary nature of all Earth-material existence. Thus they would hope to bring humanity to a realization of the spiritual origin of all beings. (The Changing Countenance of Cosmology p.48)

Elsewhere he discusses Pluto as connected to the deepest realm of will forces, those forces with elemental power behind earthquakes, violent revolutions in humanity and even nuclear destruction.

This sphere he also relates to the third adversary spoken of by Steiner, the Asuras, fallen Spirits of Personality/Archai, who are now becoming active in humanity. Steiner states, “For these Asuric Spirits will prompt what has been seized hold of by them, namely the very core of man’s being, the consciousness soul together with the ‘I’, to unite with earthly materiality. Fragment after fragment will be torn out of the ‘I’, … What thus becomes the prey of the Asuric powers will be irretrievably lost”.

Elsewhere Steiner describes how their ability to work on the materialization and destruction of the human I, is due to the long term consequences of materialism in humanity and our failure to recognize our true spiritual nature.

However Pluto is also connected with the highest spiritual transformation of the will, which can be realized in the distant future as Spirit Man; the transmutation of matter as Christ transmuted matter in the resurrection. Christ-will, working in the human being, will lead to the higher realization of Pluto in humanity.

In these times, this process begins with bringing into the will the force of Christ, permeating it with moral deeds done out of love and service to others…” ~Jonathan Hilton

***

Today I am…

A goatherd

In lions clothing

Polishing the Foundation Stone…

~hag

***

So yesterday’s Biography work was a bit esoteric with all that business from our dear Dr. Steiner on the workings of the Hierarchies etc…I think what he is saying in the quote from Karmic Relationships, can best be expressed by an example.

One of my 1^st memories as a child, was when I was about 3 years old. My family used to go on little vacations in Wisconsin to a place called Druse Lake with other beloved family friends to cool off in the Summer. We’d stay in one big cabin. The children would splash around in the calm sweet water all day trying not to get too sunburned, & at night the adults would play cards while the children slept in a puppy pile in the next room. That year, it was right before my 4^th birthday, I remember falling asleep listening to the laughter of the parents, the smell of cigarettes & clinking glasses during their card game. Suddenly I was awakened by a bright beam of moonlight shining in thru the sliding glass doors, straight into my sleeping eyes. I felt sure that Bella Luna was calling me. I got up giggling & followed the trail of the full Moon out the door onto the beach. With my arms stretched out in front of me I walked in the sand toward the silvery path illuminating a wide patch on the water. One of the ‘uncles’ saw me out there, just as I was about to step into the water, he flew out the door with his fat cigar on the side of his mouth & swooped me up in his arms. He playfully tossed me up in the air asking ‘Where do you think you’re going little miss’? ‘To the man in the moon’ I said. Boy did he get a kick out of that! He carried me back into the room where the adults were & made me repeat what I had said while they all tittered & patted my hands & head. I was plopped on my mother’s lap who said, “Are you the rabbit that lives on the moon’. I was confused & said ‘No. I was just listening.’ That got them laughing all the more. I was passed around the room, hugged by everyone & laid back in the room with the other sleeping children.

So when doing ‘biography work’ we can take a memory, such as this, calling it to mind vividly, sensing every detail, (the smells of the suntan lotion, the alcohol on my uncles breath, the cigars, the feel of my slightly sunburned skin, the sand in my pants, the faces of my ‘cousins’…etc…) bringing it all back with enthusiasm.

And then we must let the picture, the sensations, every sense bound image, GO – erase it – Let everything drop away.

Then just sit with the feeling.

Then let that go.

After a lot of practice of simply living into that opened space, there comes the possibility to encounter the spiritual beings that were behind the biographical event. We move from ‘imagination’, where we see inner images, to ‘inspiration’, where we begin to sense the forces of spiritual beings behind the images, communicating our true origins, including our personal karma & destiny. (when we learn to ‘read the cosmic script’)

This can bring us to ‘intuition’ revealing the Beings themselves.

Go ahead try it for yourself. Take a memory, from any phase of life, make it vivid. Then take it away…& see what comes up…?

***

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Cognitive Ritual

~Confessions of a Modern Rosicrucian

Monthly Archives: July 2016

I live in the Open Palm of Strangers…

Between Peace & Noise

On a deep red rose, The angry lion trod…

“Selflessness Becomes Catharsis”

Today I am…a goatherd in lions clothing

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