Monthly Archives: January 2018

Ripple

Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering

12 January (my ½ birthday) 2018– Astro-Weather: Sirius, the Dog Star, rises in the east-southeast around the end of twilight now. Procyon — left of Sirius, by 2½ fists at arm’s length — precedes it up; “Procyon” is from the ancient Greek for “before the dog.”

But if you’re as far south as San Diego, the Gulf Coast, Jacksonville, or Cairo, Egypt, they rise almost at the same time.

Sky Party at Dawn Tomorrow Saturday the 13th, the waning crescent Moon hangs far to the lower left of Jupiter & Mars & upper left of Antares. Far to Bella Luna’s lower left, near the southeast horizon, find Mercury & Saturn. They’re in conjunction.

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do”. ~Leonardo da Vinci

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1908 – A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time

Baron Arild Rosenkrantz

1910 – Rudolf Steiner gives the 1st lecture ever on the Etheric Reappearance of The Christ, to members in Stockholm Sweden. At the same time as the “initiation” of Krishnamurti in Adyar. True Nature of the Second Coming – Preparation for this Event through the Development of Etheric Vision ~RS Then on January 25th Rudolf Steiner begins the series The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric for the members in Dornach

1915 – The United States House of Representatives rejects a proposal to require states to give women the right to vote.

1918 – The Minnie Pit Disaster coal mining accident occurs in Halmer End, Staffordshire, in which 555 men & boys die

1932 – Hattie Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate.

1942 –President Franklin D. Roosevelt creates the National War Labor Board.

2010 – An earthquake in Haiti occurs, killing over 100,000 people & destroying much of the capital Port-au-Prince

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POD (Poem Of the Day)

ROSIE OSMUN

~I tremble…
a leaf’s life, like a thought, passes from me
on the ripple of it’s own vibration…

~hag

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Beowulf said: “Light holds you, Grendel. Light has you in its power. You, who have shunned the Sun, meet me, once stung by bees that drank the Sun. There’s honey in my veins, Grendel, a liquid sunlight that can kill you quite. These fingers that you feel are ten great stars. Stars have no fear. I do not fear you, Grendel. I do not fear, therefore I do not fight. I only hold you, child of Cain. I only fix you fast in your own evil, so that you cannot turn it out on any other. It is your own evil, Grendel, that undoes you. You must die, creature of night, because the light has got you in a last embrace.”

From Astrologer Victoria Martin

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SAVE THE DATE:  Lazure Workshop with Nancy Melvin – January 20-21 9am-5pm 

 $100 for the weekend (1/2 the proceeds go toward the ‘Furnace Fund’ for the Branch)

Lazure is a technique for applying several layers of transparent color washes on walls, enlivening interior spaces with breathing, light filled color.  We will Lazure the Branch’s newly renovated areas in anticipation of the Elderberries Cafe moving into the space.  We will look to Steiner’s indications for public spaces in Urban areas for color schemes.  The two day workshop will begin Saturday morning January 20th with color samples and participants can learn the brush technique which is radically different from painting with flat opaque paints.  Then right away on the first day we will test color layers and apply the first several washes on the walls.  There will be down time in between layers for participants to break for morning tea, for lunch and afternoon tea.  The next day will add layers and depth to the colors as needed.  By the end of the workshop you will learn all you need to know to go home and do this work in your home or office.

Nancy Melvin will lead the workshop, a former Waldorf Grades Teacher and teacher of wet on wet painting to children.  She has lazured many Waldorf classrooms, most recently the EC extension of CWS in Lincoln Square and the foyer of CWS’s EC area.

 for more info. Contact Nancy Melvin melvinstudiochicago@gmail.com

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John Collier

Spinning Destiny with the Fates

An Experiential Workshop with Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Saturday, 10 February 2018 – 10:30 AM – 4:30 PM

At the Theosophical Society 1926 N Main St, Wheaton, IL 60187

Come face the Fates & meet the Sibyls in the Light of Anthroposophy & ask: Does Fortune smile? Is Justice blind? How can I Co-Create with Destiny, to spin the thread of my life with integrity, to heal and clear the collective karma, & achieve my True Becoming?

Through the insights of Rudolf Steiner,  the power of Myth-Telling, & Ritual-Tasks, such as interactive drumming, & Socratic questioning; we will journey into our soul-depths to stand before the “Daughters of Necessity” that we will transform to meet our true calling; asking: ‘What is my Highest Purpose?’

Please bring your own vegetarian lunch

$60 nonmembers $50 members $70 at the door

Register here

Hazel Archer-Ginsberg  –Spiritual Midwife, Trans-denominational Minister, Essayist, Lecturer, Blogger – Anthroposopher, working as the Festivals Coordinator for the Rudolf Steiner Branch of Chicago.

Founder of  www.reverseritual.com

The Power of Freedom Reborn

Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Insight, Meditation, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote

11 January 2018 – Astro-Weather: After dinnertime the dim Little Dipper hangs straight down from Polaris, the end of its long handle — as if from a nail on the cold north wall of the sky. In warm June, by contrast, the Little Dipper’s bowl floats up from Polaris, like a helium balloon escaped from a summer party, trailing its string.

In the early dawn of Friday the 12th, the waning crescent Moon hangs to the lower left of Jupiter & Mars. It’s above Antares by a fairly similar distance.

Very far to their lower left, near the southeast horizon, find Mercury & Saturn as dawn brightens. They’re only about 1° apart. Mercury, on the right, is the brighter of the two.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Vladamir Kush

“If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor.” ~Joseph Campbell

1825 – Birthday of Karl Julius Schroer, professor of German literature & language. Political developments in 1860 forced Schröer to leave Hungary for Vienna. In the following years, Schröer researched the folklore of the ethnic Germans, or Danube Swabians, of Hungary. As part of his research, Schröer discovered a Medieval cycle of Danube Swabian mystery plays in Oberufer, a village since engulfed by the Bratislava’s borough of Ružinov. Schröer collected manuscripts, made meticulous textual comparisons, & published his findings in the book Deutsche Weihnachtspiele aus Ungarn (“The German Nativity Plays of Hungary”) in 1857/1858. Several scholars later extended this work.

In Vienna, Schröer became a major figure in Goethe scholarship. He was a founding member of the Goethe Society of Vienna in 1878 & edited the society’s official publication, “Die Chronik”, from 1886 to 1894.

Schröer was especially devoted to Faust scholarship, editing the work & providing a commentary in a two-volume edition of that play. In 1884 he published one of his most well-known works, a text dedicated to Goethe’s biography, manner of poeticizing, & relation to women: “Goethe und die Liebe” (Goethe and Love). Schröer also edited a six-volume edition of Goethe’s dramas. He campaigned for the erection of a Goethe monument in Vienna, which was approved in 1894 with a design by Edmund Hellmann. Schröer died on 16 December 1900, one day after the monument was unveiled.

Karl Julius Schroer was Rudolf Steiner’s professor & the son of the educator & writer Tobias Gottfried Schröer. Steiner speaks about these 2 individualities in their former incarnations. Tobias as Socrates & Karl as the nun Hroswitha & Plato. See Karmic Relationships, Volume IV: Lecture X

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Jim Leasure

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Today I invoke:
The Lady of the pyre –
Lady of the heat who burns up transgression
Her flame is sharp, Her fingers are orange sparks
She speaks with a tongue of far-reaching flame
Her hands are quick; She burns flesh into ash & light
She is beyond necessity,
She is the power of Freedom reborn…
Today I am Hers…
~hag

***

The Anthroposophical Society’s annual theme for 2017/2018 asks the question: ‘How can the Foundation Stone Meditation promote peace-ability, a 100 years after the birth of the Social Three-folding Impulse’? (We worked with the Foundation Stone Meditation in speech & eurythmy on Epiphany this year)

Here are a few quotes from that correspondence sent out last year at this time:

“Rudolf Steiner pronounced this “new Apollonian word” of the “Know Yourself” for the first time on 25 December 1923, when he presented the result of his spiritual investigation of the human being, after a maturation period of over thirty years, clothed in the mantric words of the Foundation Stone Meditation.

When we work meditatively with the Foundation Stone, a “light of thoughts shines towards us” and enables us to draw new inspiration for our actions from the “spirit holding sway in the radiant light of thoughts around the dodecahedral stone of love”.

…it is essential today that each individual ‘I’ finds and experiences the original impulse anew. For this to happen, self-knowledge must not remain a subjective act, limited to the understanding of one’s own individuality, but we must seek to understand what is universally human in us and in others.

The objectivity of the Foundation Stone’s spirit light can transform the anthroposophical life. Rudolf Steiner saw the Foundation Stone as the ground on which individuals can erect a “building” together. In the years ahead we would like to use the three great exercises of “Spirit-Recalling”, “Spirit-Awareness” and Spirit Beholding” as the basis of our working together.

…working on the Foundation Stone can inspire elements of a socially effective and healing culture of the Spirit-Self. The three exercises must not be misunderstood as fixed spiritual techniques, however. They inspire spiritual life in three spheres and help us to develop the individual and social dimensions of Spirit Recalling, Spirit Awareness and Spirit Beholding, each of which constitutes a separate whole. Next year (2018) we will focus on Spirit Recalling in particular. May the forces we can draw from the source be our guiding star!

The appeal to the “human soul” addresses us as human beings in a threefold way. The three dimensions, in which we learn to feel ourselves cosmically embedded, connect us with the “Father-Spirit of the Heights”, the “Christ-Will encircling us” and the “Spirit’s world-thoughts”. This sense of being connected can gradually evolve as we respond through practice to the threefold call.

The very first invocation, “practice Spirit-Recalling”, inspires a wealth of questions, moods and exercises. Remembering is the central soul activity of the ‘I’.

In the cycle that accompanied the Christmas Conference (“World History and the Mysteries in the Light of Anthroposophy”) Rudolf Steiner looks at the memory of early humanity, inviting us to consider entirely different soul configurations. (We worked with these lectures 2 years ago during the Holy Nights)

Anthroposophy asks us to give a spiritual direction to our memory through practicing. In the context of the Christmas Conference Rudolf Steiner mentioned exercises for the enhancement of memory. In the lecture cycle “Mystery Knowledge and Mystery Centres” he recommends that we meditate on an event in our childhood or youth. (We have & will continue to explore this in our Biography work at the branch & with the Central Regional Council thru our new theme: Karma & Reincarnation)

In extending our gaze beyond the boundary of birth we enhance memory. We may ask ourselves what decisions were made before birth that have led to our present incarnation…awakening to other origins and destinies, because they determine our work, our encounters and relationships in an essential way and confront us with challenges as we try to live and work together, especially when we meet people with whom we don’t seem to “gel” or feel an affinity. Within the Anthroposophical Society we are called upon to work together as a community. A rightly cultivated memory can make us open for new ways of working together, for a new “sun karma” that will be a precondition for us to create a new culture of humaneness.

The review asks us to develop our will and our thinking at the same time.

We are not meant to dwell on our own thoughts and views when we look back, but on what comes to meet us in the outside world, in reverse order, so that our will can tear itself away from the physical. We expand into the world around us and experience how this world has formed us and what we have become through it. This kind of review, which can gradually become spirit-recalling, enables us to meet others in an imaginative way. The will effort involved in the review exercise promotes spirit-beholding. Because we have cultivated spirit-recalling, others can become image in us and express themselves imaginatively in spirit-beholding. And more than that: we find in this activity the foundations of the modern initiation experience.

Rudolf Steiner explained the transition from thinking to vision through will application…if we learn to behold the spiritual world through our will being, once it has become transparent, our thinking will become vision. By practicing spirit-recalling we will become able to achieve spirit-beholding and receive impulses for our actions from the spiritual world. In taking this step of working on the Foundation Stone Meditation together, out of the whole of anthroposophy, we hope to bring these fundamental exercises to life. ~Christiane Haid, Goetheanum Leadership and Jaap Sijmons, General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands.

***

Lazure Workshop with Nancy Melvin 

January 20-21, 2018, 9 am-5 pm Come to any or all of the sessions

$100 for the weekend (1/2 the proceeds go toward a new heating & cooling system for the branch)

Lazure is a technique for applying several layers of transparent color washes on walls, enlivening interior spaces with breathing, light filled color.  We will Lazure the Branch’s newly renovated areas in anticipation of the Elderberries Cafe moving into the space.  We will look to Steiner’s indications for public spaces in Urban areas for color schemes.  The two day workshop will begin Saturday morning January 20th with color samples and participants can learn the brush technique which is radically different from painting with flat opaque paints.  Then right away on the first day we will test color layers and apply the first several washes on the walls.  There will be down time in between layers for participants to break for morning tea, for lunch and afternoon tea.  The next day will add layers and depth to the colors as needed.  By the end of the workshop you will learn all you need to know to go home and do this work in your home or office.

Nancy Melvin will lead the workshop, a former Waldorf Grades Teacher and teacher of wet on wet painting to children.  She has lazured many Waldorf classrooms, most recently the EC extension of CWS in Lincoln Square and the foyer of CWS’s EC area as well as at the Angelic Organics Farm.

for more info. contact  Nancy Melvin

***

 Spinning Destiny with the Fates – An Experiential Workshop with Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Saturday, 10 February 2018 – 10:30 AM – 4:30 PM

At the Theosophical Society 1926 N Main St, Wheaton, IL 60187

Come face the Fates & meet the Sibyls in the Light of Anthroposophy & ask: Does Fortune smile? Is Justice blind? How can I Co-Create with Destiny, to spin the thread of my life with integrity, to heal and clear the collective karma, & achieve my True Becoming?

Through the insights of Rudolf Steiner,  the power of Myth-Telling, & Ritual-Tasks, such as interactive drumming, & Socratic questioning; we will journey into our soul-depths to stand before the “Daughters of Necessity” that we will transform to meet our true calling; asking: ‘What is my Highest Purpose?’

Please bring your own vegetarian lunch

$60 nonmembers $50 members $70 at the door

Register here

Hazel Archer-Ginsberg  –Spiritual Midwife, Trans-denominational Minister, Essayist, Lecturer, Blogger – Anthroposopher, working as the Festivals Coordinator for the Rudolf Steiner Branch of Chicago. Founder of  www.reverseritual.com

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3 December 2017 – Astro-Weather: Watch Sirius rise this evening! Find a spot with an open view smack down to the east-southeast horizon, & watch for Sirius to come up below Orion’s vertical Belt, by about two fists at arm’s length. Sirius rises around 7 pm CST now, & tends to twinkle quite slowly & often in vivid colors.

Sirius & Procyon in the balance. Once Sirius is up, look to its left (by about two fists at arm’s length) for Procyon.

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

“Study the past if you would define the future.”  ~Confucius

160  – Saints Victor & Corona are two Christian martyrs. They were killed in Roman Syria during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Their legend states that Victor was a Roman soldier of Italian ancestry, serving in the city of Damascus. He was tortured -including having his eyes gouged out- by a commander named Sebastian. While he was suffering from these tortures, the sixteen-year-old spouse of one of his brothers-in-arms, named Corona, comforted & encouraged him. For this, she was arrested & interrogated. Corona was bound to two bent palm trees & torn apart as the trunks were released

562 – Hagia Sophia in Constantinople reopened with a rebuilt dome after a series of earthquakes caused the original to collapse

605 – Deathday of Dagobert, murdered while hunting. The last Frankish king of the Merovingian dynasty . The prosperity of Dagobert’s reign, & the revival of the arts during this period, can be judged from the rich contents of the tombs of the period & from the goldsmiths’ work for the churches. Dagobert revised Frankish law, encouraged learning, patronized the arts, & founded the first great abbey of Saint-Denis

1539 – 1st mention of a Christmas tree at the Strasbourg Minster

1805 – Birthday of Joseph Smith, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

1888 – Deathday of Laurence Oliphant, occultist. Rudolf Steiner speaks of him: In the early years of this century I was several times in London. On the occasion of one of these visits I was prompted to make myself acquainted with an extraordinarily significant personality — to begin with, simply in his writings. And as in those days there were rather longer intervals between the journeys than there are now, I obtained from the Theosophical Library the books he had written — the books that is to say, of Laurence Oliphant.

Laurence Oliphant is a remarkably interesting and significant personality: he strikes you in this way directly you begin to study his writings. These books deal with the similarities to be found in different religions, with spiritual religions, and so forth; and all of them bear evidence of a deep understanding of how in the various processes of his body and soul, man is connected with the secrets of the universe. When you read Oliphant’s writings you have the impression: Here is a picture of man in his earth-life that owes its inspiration to deep cosmic instincts. The processes of the earthly life of man that are connected with birth, embryonic life, descent and so forth, are described in such a way as to show how man, as microcosm, is wondrously rooted in the macrocosm.

Now I was very soon led in this study to a point where the figure of the dead Laurence Oliphant stood before me, but not in a form which suggested that I had here to do with the individuality as he was then living after death; it was rather that what was contained in these writings (which may be described as setting forth a kind of cosmic physiology, a cosmic anatomy) began to come alive, began to spiritualise; and a figure appeared, not all at once entirely clear, but unquestionably there before me on many different occasions. I was able to make occult investigations into the matter and I could never do otherwise than bring the figure into connection with what came to me from reading Oliphant. It was very often there before me. At first I was often unable to satisfy myself as to what this figure wanted, what its manifestations meant. The whole manner of its appearance however, left me in no doubt whatever that it was none other than the individuality of Laurence Oliphant; and it was likewise clear to me that this figure had had a long life in the time between death and a new birth — that is to say, the birth as Laurence Oliphant — probably only broken by one earth-life that was not very significant for the rest of the world. What might not then be hidden in the personality of Laurence Oliphant! In short, this appearance of the figure of Laurence Oliphant suggested significant questions of karma.

When I entered on an investigation of the karma, a spiritual Being became manifest who is engaged in the elaboration of human karma, in the same way as the Mars Being of whom I told you in connection with Voltaire and with Ignatius Loyola.~ Cosmic Christianity: Lecture V

One of the most important guidelines that the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings communicate to pupils through a teacher is: Learn to be silent and you’ll get power; give up power and you’ll get will; give up will and you’ll get feeling; give up feeling and you’ll get knowledge. An esoteric must place these occult propositions before his soul in all work and action, and then some day he’ll experience that the four verses are true. One should note that the various forces can only be attained in sequence, so that one can never attain knowledge first and maybe then feeling and then will, and then power. For will arises from the renunciation of power, etc. We’ll give an example from the life of a very rich Briton, Laurence Oliphant, who lived in the middle of the last century. He and his wife had a noble love for their poorer neighbors and moved by this feeling they gave most of what they had to them; and then they migrated to New York. There they made enough money to go to Mt Tabor near Haifa. Here a strange phenomena arose. Oliphant began to write some very interesting and strange books about Genesis that were some of the strangest things that were written about the Bible at the time. But he could only have these thoughts with the help of his wife. After she died Oliphant could only keep on working for a short time, and then the inspiration of his deceased wife no longer reached the physical plane.~ From the Contents of Esoteric Classes, EL, Koeln, 12-1-’06

1913 – The Federal Reserve Act is signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, creating the Federal Reserve System

1972 – A 6.5 magnitude earthquake strikes the Nicaraguan capital of Managua killing more than 10,000

1986 – Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan & Jeana Yeager -the first aircraft to fly non-stop around the world without refueling

2002 – A U.S. MQ-1 Predator is shot down by an Iraqi MiG-25 in the first combat engagement between a drone & conventional aircraft

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Connor Zendejas

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~We are gods in the body of god…
Truth & Love Our Destiny…
Go then & make of the world something beautiful…
Set up a light in the darkness..
~hag

***

Mieke Filmich

Tomorrow we begin our annual journey thru the HOLY NIGHTS, so I wanted to connect with you today, on this eve of the eve, to prepare the way, in the hopes that we can take this powerful initiatory passage together.

Each of the 12 days & 13 nights – From the Eve of the Sacred Birth, to the Eve of Epiphany, can be seen as a micro-cosmic experience of the macro-cosm, allowing us to approach the sublime gesture of the divine spiritual beings, whose outer vestments are the constellations of the zodiac – while simultaneously contemplating the events in our own lives, in order to uncover the golden threads connecting us to each other, as well as to the goals of Earth evolution, & to the divine spiritual nature that comes to birth again & again at this darkest time of year.

This sacred ‘Time out of Time’ provides an opportunity to contemplate, not only the great journey of the Cosmic Christ thru the zodiac into the body of Jesus; but also the path of Jesus to Christ; as well the evolution of every Human Being as a Star unfolding in an Earthly biography – for we as human beings are following both paths.

 Lucas Cranach the younger

On Christmas Eve, we begin the contemplation with Adam & Eve, remembering that the fall was the reason The Christ Being made the sacrificial journey from the Godhead to become the Son of Man. The Holy Nights are completed on Epiphany, also recognized as the Baptism -when the Son of God – The Christ – entered human form.

So, when we look at the circle of the Zodiac during the Holy Nights we can find imprinted there a memory of that significant track from spiritual heights to human depths. The 12 apostles formed an outer version of these constellations around Jesus Christ. And we all incarnate into these various signs on our way to becoming spirit once again.

On December 25th, we are invited to consider the historical events behind the first Christmas. A thoughtful way to approach the birthday of Jesus is through the two Nativity stories in the Gospels, each very different from the other.  St. Matthew’s Gospel points to the Solomon Jesus, a re-incarnation of the great sage Zarathustra, actually born earlier in Bethlehem, in the time of Herod, when he is visited by Magi & then fled to Egypt. The Gospel of St. Luke points to the Nathan Jesus, born in Nazareth, a pure divine soul never incarnated before, that part of Adam that stayed in the spiritual world & prepared the way for the Christ.

The two Jesus children unite when the Luke child is twelve & the Matthew child is 14. We find this story in Luke 2:41-52 when his parents find him teaching in the Temple in Jerusalem. As Rudolf Steiner explained in the ‘Fifth Gospel’, the Luke Nathan Jesus takes on the soul forces (Ego) of the wise Matthew Jesus who sacrifices his life on the physical plane.

Di Vinci

Shortly before the Baptism in the Jordan, when Jesus was 30 years old, the Ego of the Solomon soul leaves Jesus & enters Mary, to make room for the Christ at the Baptism by John.

During the Renaissance, some artists knew of these profound secrets, & painted this occult theme showing 3 sacred children: the Luke Nathan Jesus as a boy & a second older boy, The Jesus form the Matthew Gospel, along with John the Baptist (cousin of the Luke Jesus)

 David Newbatt

Of course the mystery schools of old prepared their pupils for this journey even before the birth of Jesus. And any one familiar with the Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson knows that the legend speaks well to this:

“Come listen to me and hear my song
The song of a wonderful youth,
I’ll sing you of Olaf Åsteson
Who slept many days — ’tis the truth.

‘Twas Christmas Eve when down he lay
And slept so long all unknowing,
He never woke till the thirteenth day
When to Church the people were going.
Yes, it was Olaf Åsteson
Who lay so long a-sleeping… ”

Take these ideas into your thoughts, into your sleep – for tomorrow we begin to traverse the return path that leads thru the 12 constellations of the zodiac to a conscious union with the whole world of the Hierarchies.

Until soon –

Xox ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg