12 march 2018 – Astro-Weather: After dark, Orion‘s near-horizontal Belt points to the right toward orange Aldebaran in the west &, farther on, the little Pleiades star cluster subtly glittering. The Pleiades are heading down to a twilight rendezvous with Venus in six weeks. They’ll pass closest to Venus for a few nights around April 23rd.
Mars’ eastward motion relative to the background stars carries it from Ophiuchus into Sagittarius today. The Red Planet rises around 2 am CDT & climbs high in the south-southeast by the time twilight begins. Although the passage from Ophiuchus into Sagittarius is little more than a technical milestone, it does set up a series of pretty conjunctions with some of the Archer’s deep-sky gems starting next week.
Sun enters the constellation of The Fishes: “…We are still only about a third into our Age in which the spiritual soul will be developed. Thus we are still in the throes of shedding and transforming the forms inherited from the past and struggling to realize our true humanity and the tasks of our age. We can see in the world around this battle to move out of the forms of the past: religions defined by dogma and the law rather than conscious human awareness of the spiritual; social forms based on archaic hierarchical structures created out of the old mystery traditions; a sense of selfhood defined out of the old Roman personality cult; and a view of nature as devoid of spirit and separate from our humanity. These old forms of the past seek to hold on in humanity because the very nature of evil is that it seeks to retain the past beyond it’s appointed time, thus preventing evolution into the future. In this way the adversary powers work to hold humanity back from its spiritual development. In this way they hinder the move towards the new experience of the etheric Christ which will be the only foundation for our forward evolution into the Aquarian future.
Pisces constellation carries this struggle, which contains both a kind of culmination of the past and the start of something new. It is the challenge of the Consciousness Soul age. The two fishes swim apart..the one towards the past, Greco-Roman Age, the other towards the future, the Aquarian Age..a polarity in need of resolution through the work of the ego. The two spheres stand side by side horizontally…the worlds of matter and spirit, faith and knowledge in need of resolution through the human being; the constellation of hands and feet, through which we take up the world of matter and shape it; through which we reach out to the other to build community and through which we learn to stand on our own two feet as free beings in the world. In this constellation is carried now the mystery of Golgotha/Easter through which the great separation was healed. It is through this deed of love that we can realize what this age requires in order to stand as brothers with fellow human beings, with even our own double being, and with the world of higher divine beings. No longer do we live in hierarchy as children of the gods…but since the deed of Christ, we can begin to work as brothers with Him.” ~Jonathan Hilton On behalf of the Astrosophy Center
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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
6th Century – DeathDay of Pope Gregory the Great: “Non Angli, sed angeli” – “They are not Angles, but angels”.
1312 – Abolition of the order of Knights Templar
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POD (Poem Of the Day)
~Blessings on the beetle sun
Which rolls into life humming a shining ball of song…
The world is a little patch of ground you travel
From your cosmic space with no haste
Sing us into spring...
~hag
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Initially, the Knights Templar faced criticism from some religious leaders. But in 1129, the group received the formal endorsement of the Catholic Church & support from Bernard of Clairvaux, a prominent French abbot.
In 1139, Pope Innocent II issued a Papal Bull that allowed the Knights Templar special rights. Among them, the Templars were exempt from paying taxes, permitted to build their own oratories, & held to no one’s authority, except the Pope’s.
The Knights Templar set up a prosperous network of banks & gained enormous financial influence. Their banking system allowed religious pilgrims to deposit assets in their home countries & withdraw funds in the Holy Land.
The order became known for its austere code of conduct & signature style of dress, which featured a white habit emblazoned with a simple red cross.
Members swore an oath of poverty, chastity & obedience. Prayer was essential to their daily life, & the Templars expressed particular adoration for the Virgin Mary.
As the Knights Templar grew in size & status, it established new chapters throughout Western Europe.
At the height of their influence, the Templars boasted a sizable fleet of ships, owned the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, & served as a primary bank &lending institution to European monarchs & nobles.
The Fall of Acre in 1291 marked the destruction of the last remaining Crusader refuge in the Holy Land. European support of the military campaigns in the Holy Land began to erode over the decades that followed. Additionally, many secular & religious leaders became increasingly critical of the Templars’ wealth & power.
By 1303, the Knights Templar lost its foothold in the Muslim world & established a base of operations in Paris. There, King Philip IV of France resolved to bring down the order, perhaps because the Templars had denied the indebted ruler additional loans.
On Friday, October 13, 1307, scores of French Templars were arrested, including the order’s grand master Jacques de Molay. Many of the knights were brutally tortured until they confessed to false charges, which included heresy, homosexuality, financial corruption, devil worshipping, fraud, spitting on the cross & more.
A few years later, dozens of Templars were burned at the stake in Paris for their confessions. De Molay was executed in 1314.
Under pressure from King Philip, Pope Clement V reluctantly dissolved the Knights Templar TODAY 12 March 1312. The group’s property & monetary assets were taken by King Philip & King Edward II of England, seizing most of the Knights Templar’s wealth.
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Albertus Magnus by Tommaso da Modena
Sophie Takata
copy
Fra Angelico
