Whitsun Verse by Rudolf Steiner:
There first
Where sense can know no more,
Stands the portal, which discloses
Life-reality
To Soul-being;
This portal’s key the Soul may fashion
If she herself grow strong within the strife
By World-Powers waged on their own ground
With human forces;
If of her own accord she puts to flight
The sleep, which at the frontier of her senses
Cloaks the forces of knowledge
In spirit-night. (Translated by Owen Barfield)
Kip Decker
Beloved Friends –
During our time together on this Whitsun day, we will work with the Whitsun imagination to creatively explore how we may engage in the lifting out of the ‘me’ into the ‘we’, out of opinion into wisdom; warming the I, to open the heart, in support of healthy community. We will endeavor to strengthen our individual soul forces to collectively open the portal into the Spirit worlds.
Leonor Fini
As Steiner’s Whitsun verse states: “This portal’s key the Soul may fashion If she herself grow strong within the strife” …
We will create an Ecclesia, a vessel, a chalice, a sheath for the Spirit. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas conference, where the inverted Whitsun, was born, the idea of moving the spirit that has flowed through the head into the heart, transforming it into wisdom to redeem our intelligence, & then back out as a gift to humanity.
Iris Sullivan
Our work is to take our individual Inner Whitsun & expand it, into what Steiner calls the “World Festival of Knowledge” a path leading from ‘Spirit Recollection’, to ‘Spirit Sensing’, to ‘Spirit Beholding’.
In this sense the Christmas Conference, in all its spiritual reality reveals itself as the true Whitsun for anthroposophers. Those who strive to take into their souls the Wisdom of the Holy Spirit concerning the human being – Anthropos-Sophia, which is the knowledge of the grail held aloft by Michael in this present age of the consciousness soul.
Let’s think about it. The foundation stone was formed by Rudolf Steiner at the Christmas conference out of the Father-forces rising from the depths, gravity, unconscious will, the Son-forces working in the periphery, warmth, creative love, & the Spirit-forces descending from the heights, consciousness, wisdom.
Thru Steiner’s profound mystery deed, an altogether new relationship of the macrocosmic forces working within man – the thoughts of the Spirit revealed in the human head, Christ working in the heart, & the will of the Father fulfilled in the deeds of the limbs, was made openly manifest.
David Newbatt
When Steiner took on the karma of the society he gave the Michaelic impulse the possibility of flowing directly into the earth sphere & into those active in the Anthroposophical society.
El Greco
Here we see a direct relationship with the original Pentecost, which was the 3rd & final stage of Christ, the Sun Being’s union with the stream of Earthly Being, & the mission of Anthroposophy, as the Proclamation of World Pentecost.
Larry Young
Yes, we live in a potent time, when divergent karmic streams have the possibility of coming together-‘That Good May Become,’ a time when, some say, the Platonist’s of the School of Chartres & the Aristotelian-Dominicans, The Arthur & Grail streams with true Rosicrucianism, meet the new Michaelic Grail imagination arising in the human soul. A renewed chalice whose substance is Love, whose form is Imagination & whose light of thought which radiates, is redeemed Michaelic Intelligence. This transforms the stone of the wise, into the dodecahedral foundation stone of love.
Sally Furner
For Michael frees thoughts from the realm of the head, opening a path to the heart, bringing forth that shining, raying-out of the divine chalice, that celestial light of redeemed intelligence, which like the radiance of the spiritual sun, can unite into a single whole the Spiritual substance of love & human love, in the Holy Grail that was set into our souls at the Christmas conference. Calling ever & again for a renewal of the spiritual quest.
May this ‘Festival of United Soul Endeavor’ enkindle us in the true kinship of conscious community
with fellowship & love ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg
