21 September 2018 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Mars shines well to the right of the waxing gibbous Moon this evening. Between them is boat-shaped Capricornus — or as I sometimes see it in a dark sky, a huge, smiling clown mouth gaping down at the world.
Around the closing days of summer (the equinox is tomorrow), you always find the Sagittarius Teapot moving to the right of south during evening & tipping increasingly far over to the right, as if pouring out summer’s end.
***
“The Master said, “A true teacher is one who, keeping the past alive, is also able to understand the present.” (Analects 2.11)” ~Confucius
Feast of St. Matthew, a 1st-century Galilean, the son of Alpheus. As a tax collector he was literate in Aramaic & Greek. After his call, Matthew invited Jesus home for a feast. On seeing this, the Scribes & the Pharisees criticized Jesus for eating with tax collectors & sinners. This prompted Jesus to answer, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ I did not come to call the righteous but sinners” (Matthew 9:12-13)
19 BC – Deathday of Virgil, Roman poet
1780 – Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point.
1792 – The National Convention declares France a republic & abolishes the absolute monarchy
1860 – Deathday of Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher & author
1866 – Birthday of H. G. Wells
1912 – Birthday of Chuck Jones, American animator, producer, & screenwriter
1934 – A large typhoon hits western Honshū, Japan, killing 3,036 people
1938 – The Great Hurricane of 1938 makes landfall on Long Island in New York. The death toll is estimated at 500-700 people
1942 – In Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, Nazis murder 2,588 Jews
1972 – Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos signs Proclamation № 1081, placing the entire country under martial law marking the beginning of his authoritarian rule
1976 – Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D.C. He is a member of the Chilean socialist government of Salvador Allende, overthrown in 1973 by Augusto Pinochet
1991 – Armenia is granted independence from Soviet Union
1993 – Russian President Boris Yeltsin suspends parliament & scraps the constitution, triggering the Russian constitutional crisis
1996 – The Defense of Marriage Act passes the United States Congress. The law prohibited federal recognition of same-sex marriage, while allowing states to adopt any marital definition of their choosing
1998 – Deathday of John Wood, Anthroposophical translator
1999 – Chi-Chi earthquake occurs in central Taiwan, leaving over 2,400 people dead
***
David Newbatt
POD (Poem Of the Day)
~Striving on the Peace Path Gathering hot iron From the falling stars Climbing the Tree of Life To anoint Michael’s sword
~hag
***
John Stolfo
Lecture 2. Steiner says that since the dragon is a super-sensible being in the sense of world — it attracts the super-sensible elemental forces that stream toward humanity out of nature and unites with them, with the result that the human being, instead of releasing the plant elementals from their spell through our soul and Gemüt, unites them with the Dragon – allows them to perish with the Dragon in our lower nature.
The elemental beings dwelling in minerals, plants, and animals must rise to a higher existence in the evolutionary process. This can only be accomplished by passing through human beings. Steiner says we have a cosmic aim within the entire world evolution; linked with the further development of these elemental beings.
When we enter into a right relationship with them, they can attain to this higher stage of evolution.”
“…We must acquire a feeling, a Gemüt content, telling us that every blossom bears testimony to the existence of an enchanted elemental being within it; and we will learn to feel the longing in this elemental being to be released by us, instead of being delivered up to the Dragon. And when the flowers wither in the autumn we will know that we have succeeded in contributing a bit to the progress of spirit in the world, in enabling an elemental being to slip out of its plant when the blossoms wither and fall and become seed. But only if we can permeate ourselves with the powerful strength of Michael are we able to lead this elemental being up into the spirit for which it yearns.
“…We must really live into & experience the cycles of the seasons. We can experience spring as the birth of elemental beings longing for the spirit, and in autumn, activate their liberation from the dying plants and withering blossoms. We can sense the transformation of nature as part of our own destiny: we will coalesce with all that grows there, because our free individuality can pour itself out in sacrifice into the cosmos. — this is how we can contribute to Michael’s Conflict with the Dragon.”
“…So can you see? that what leads to true a Michaelmas Festival must be an event of the human Gemüt, a Gemüt event that can once more experience the cycle of the seasons as a living reality…”
”…the ability to experience in our blood circulation the pulse-beat of outer existence as we do our own innermost being that is the preparation needed for the Michael Festival.”
20 September 2018 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The yellow-orange point to the right of Bella Luna this evening is Mars. Once night is fully dark, look for Fomalhaut, the Autumn Star, rising about three fists to the Moon’s lower left.
Mars by WilliamTurners
Mercury reaches superior conjunction at 9 pm CDT. This means the innermost planet lies on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth & remains hidden in our Day Star’s glare. It will return to view in the evening sky, though just barely, in late October.
Looking at the past to see the present, co-creating the future:
“History, historical life, will only be seen in the right light when a true consciousness of the connection of the so-called living with the so-called dead can be developed” – The Living and the Dead by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, 5th February, 1918
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
622 – Muhammad & Abu Bakr arrived in Medina
1378 – Cardinal Robert of Geneva, called by some the “Butcher of Cesena“, is elected as Pope Clement VII, beginning the Papal schism. He was the 1stantipope residing in Avignon, France
1498 – The 1498 Nankai earthquake generates a tsunami that washes away the building housing the statue of the Great Buddha at Kōtoku-in in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan. Over 10,000 die
1519 – Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with 270 men on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe
1737 – The Walking Purchase– between the Penn family, the proprietors of Pennsylvania, & the Lenape Tribe (also known as the Delaware). This document may have been an unsigned, unratified treaty, or even an outright forgery (Encyclopædia Britannica refers to it as a “land swindle”. The Penns’ agents began selling land, an area of 1,200,000 acres, in the Lehigh Valley to colonists while the Lenape still inhabited the area
1893 – Charles Duryea road-tests the first American-made gasoline-powered automobile
1906 – Founding of the Paracelsus Branch, Basel Switzerland
1913 – The laying of the Foundation Stone of the 1st Goetheanum
1913 – Founding of the Moscow Branch of the Anthroposophical Society
1933 – Deathday of Annie Besant. In 1890 Besant met Helena Blavatsky. She became a member of the Theosophical Society & a prominent lecturer. She established the first overseas Lodge of the International Order of Co-Freemasonry, Le Droit Humain. Over the next few years she established lodges in many parts of the British Empire. In 1907 she became president of the Theosophical Society, whose international headquarters were in Adyar, Madras. She also became involved in politics in India, joining the Indian National Congress. When World War I broke out in 1914, she helped launch the Home Rule League to campaign for democracy in India. This led to her election as president of the India National Congress.In the late 1920s,Besant travelled to the United States with her protégé & adopted son Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom she claimed was the new Messiah & incarnation of Buddha. Krishnamurti rejected these claims in 1929. She isthought to be the reincarnation of Giordano Bruno
1941 – Holocaust 403 Jews (128 men, 176 women & 99 children) were murdered by Einsatzkommando 3 in Nemencing, Latvia.
1942 – Holocaust in Letychiv, Ukraine. In the course of two days the German SS murders at least 3,000 Jews
1973 – Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes tennis match at the Houston Astrodome
***
POD (Poem Of the Day)
~i sing the rain
in fresh contemplation
of change…
Lecture 1. How can humanity, the earth citizen, become once more a citizen of the cosmos? The expansion of life’s horizon into cosmic reaches brings the human being into the picture of Michael’s Conflict with the Dragon.
The Dragon is not found in the sense world. Where is he? The dragon lives within the human being. “…the outer cosmic conflict of Michael and the Dragon was transferred to the inner human being, because only in human nature could the Dragon now find his sphere of action.”
Because of that Michael now works with us to fight the dragon within human nature.
Steiner gives this picture of the dragon writhing around the animalistic part of humanity, even coiling around the heart; but then — behind us, at the back of the head — the outer cosmic figure of Michael, towering, radiant, retaining his cosmic nature but reflecting it in the higher human nature, so that our etheric body reflects etherically the cosmic figure of Michael. Then there would be visible in the human head — but working down into the heart — the power of Michael, crushing the Dragon and causing blood to flow down from the heart to the limbs.” So we can put our will into action
“…. In the intellect we are isolated from the world, because everyone has their own head, and in that head, their own thoughts. But In our Gemüt we cannot do that, the Gemüt is not dependent upon the head, but on the rhythmic system, bringing us back to where we belong, as a being in the cosmos.”
The Gemüt, as meaning something like: ‘the mind warmed by a loving heart and stimulated by the soul’s imaginative power’.
“…So with our Gemüt we can say: The power of the Dragon is working within me, I might not see it — but I can feel it as a force that wants to drag me down below myself. But in the spirit I see the luminous Angel whose cosmic task has always been the vanquishing of the Dragon. I concentrate my Gemüt upon this glowing figure, I let its light stream into my Gemüt, so that my illumined and warmed Gemüt will bear within it the strength of Michael. And out of a free resolution I will be able, through my alliance with Michael, to conquer the Dragon’s might in my own lower nature.”
“…this activated Gemüt enters into a living relationship with the whole cosmos the moment it indeed comes to life.
Life will not have a true soul content until we can develop cosmic impulses in our Gemüt.”
Friday Sept. 21, 2018, 7 -9pm, Saturday Sept. 22, 10 am – 5 pm, Sunday Sept. 23, 10 am -1pm
Workshop fee: $135.00 for RSB members, $160.00 for non-members Supply fee: $135.00*
***
Friday 28 September 2018 – COMMUNITY MEETING
at 7 pm with Ann Burfeind
Checking in on our local Anthroposophical Initiatives:
Are you a Waldorf Teacher, Branch Member, Christian Community Member, In the Arcturus Teacher Training, Involved with Anthroposophical Medicine, or Bio-Dynamics, Interested in serving the Being of Chicago…? Please come & bring a report, of the new school, or your Spiritual Scientific research…ETC…
We will also have a review of the How We Will Forum2
All in the spirit of Michaelmas
***
Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society, 4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
The Elderberries 3-Fold Space is currently available for rental on PEER SPACEfor classes, events, meetings, retreats, art exhibits, family parties, etc…
19 September 2018 – “Speaking with the Stars“: Bella Luna & Mars, the Warrior god, travel across the southern sky together this evening. Mars is currently 200 times farther away than the Moon. Find Saturn, the initiator, almost three fists to their right.
***
“What is to be the starting force & impulse for events in social & ethical life must come out of the spiritual world.” Rudolf Steiner, New Spiritual Impulses in History” Dornach 16 December, 1917
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
The Feast of San Gennaro, an Italian-American festival. Originally a one-day religious commemoration, the festival was first celebrated in the United States in September 1926, when immigrants from Naples congregated along Mulberry Street in the Little Italy section of Manhattan in New York City. The immigrant families on Mulberry Street who started the feast, a group of cafe owners, erected a small chapel in the street to house the image of their patron Saint. They invited all to partake of their wares, asking the devoted to pin an offering to the ribbon streamers that are hung from the statue’s apron. This money was then distributed to the needy poor of the neighborhood. Over time, the festival expanded into an 11-day street fair organized & run by people outside the neighborhood. It is now an annual celebration of food & drink, & a major tourist attraction. Centered on Mulberry Street, which is closed to traffic for the occasion, the festival generally features sausages, zeppole, street vendors, games, parades and other such attractions.
The Feast of Our Lady of La Salette*
634 – Siege of Damascus: The Rashidun Arabs under Khalid ibn al-Walid capture Damascus from the Byzantine Empire
1692 –The only death by peine forte et dure in American history was Giles Corey, who was (“pressed to death”) during the Salem witch trials, after he refused to enter a plea in the judicial proceeding. According to legend, his last words as he was being crushed were “More weight”, even though he was thought to be dead as the weight was applied
*1846 – Two French shepherd children, Mélanie Calvat & Maximin Giraud, experience a Marian apparition on a mountaintop near La Salette, France, now known as Our Lady of La Salette. They returned from the mountain where they had been minding cows & reported seeing “a beautiful lady” on Mount Sous-Les Baisses, weeping bitterly. They described her as sitting with her elbows resting on her knees & her face buried in her hands. She was clothed in a white robe studded with pearls; & a gold colored apron; white shoes & roses about her feet & high head-dress. She wore a crucifix suspended by a necklace from her neck.
According to their account, she continued to weep even as she spoke to them, first in French, then in their own dialect. After giving a secret to each child, the apparition walked into a hill & vanished. The following day the children’s account of the apparition was put into writing & signed by the visionaries & those who had heard the story.
According to the children’s account, the Virgin invited people to respect the repose of the seventh day, & the name of God. She sorrowfully threatened punishment, in particular a scarcity of potatoes, which would rot. The context of these punishments places the warning just prior to the winter of 1846–1847, which was in Europe, & especially in Ireland & in France, a period of famine in the months which followed the apparition. This was one of the factors of the apparition’s popular appeal
1864 – American Civil War: Third Battle of Winchester: Union troops under General Philip Sheridan defeat a Confederate force commanded by General Jubal Early. With over 50,000 troops engaged it was the largest battle fought in the Shenandoah Valley & was not only militarily decisive in that region of Virginia but also played a role in securing Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1864
1881 – U.S. President James A. Garfield dies of wounds suffered in a July 2 shooting. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker, at the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station in Washington. Among those at the station was Robert Todd Lincoln, who sixteen years before had watched his father die from an assassin’s bullet. Vice President Chester A. Arthur becomes President upon Garfield’s death
1893 – Women’s suffrage: In New Zealand, the Electoral Act of 1893 is consented to by the governor giving all women in New Zealand the right to vote
1812 – Deathday of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the banking dynasty
1940 – Witold Pilecki is voluntarily captured and sent to Auschwitz to smuggle out information and start a resistance
1946 – The Council of Europe is founded following a speech by Winston Churchill at the University of Zurich, calling for a “United States of Europe”
1952 – The US bars Charlie Chaplin from re-entering the country after a trip to England
1957 – First American underground nuclear bomb test (part of Operation Plumbbob)
1976 – Turkish Airlines Flight 452 hits the Taurus Mountains, killing all 154 passengers & crew
1976 – Two Imperial Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom II jets fly out to investigate a UFO when both independently lose instrumentation & communications as they approach, only to have them restored upon withdrawal
1985 – A Violent. 8.0m earthquake hits Greater Mexico City area, killing at least 5,000 people, & destroys about 400 buildings
1989 – A terrorist bomb explodes UTA Flight 772 in mid-air above the Tùnùrù Desert, Niger, killing 171
***
POD (Poem Of the Day)
As the approaching Michaelmas Equinox Pulls the Afternoon Sun into a Blinding Shaft – The Drawn Sword of Michael – Pierces Thru On the Oblique Angle of the Sun Casting a long Shadow That Stretches to the Western Horizon Yet Met In Silent Admonition Thru Strident Free Discernment Revealing the Revelation In the Spirit-Light of Thought
~hag
***
Greetings Friends –
During this time of Michaelmas a shift occurs, within us, echoing outside of us, in nature, and reflected in various cultural expressions and traditions.
At the height of ‘The High Holy Days’, or ‘Days of Awe’ is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which comes ten days after Rosh Hashanah, and refers to the annual Jewish observance of fasting, prayer and repentance, which starts tonight.
It is the moment in time to dedicate mind, body, and soul to reconciliation – with God, our fellow human beings, and ourselves; a time to turn to those whom we have wronged, acknowledging the pain we might have caused. At the same time, being willing to forgive and to let go of certain offenses and the feelings of resentment they provoked in us. This journey for both seekers and givers of pardon mirrors the journey a soul takes after death.
According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person’s fate for the coming year into the ‘Book of Life’ on Rosh Hashanah, and waits until Yom Kippur to “seal” the verdict.
Five days after Yom Kippur, is Sukkot, which means ‘Hut’.
Sukkot has a dual significance – historical and agricultural.
The holiday commemorates the forty-years in which the children of Israel wandered in the desert, living in temporary shelters, and it is also a harvest festival, sometimes referred to as the Festival of Ingathering, or “The Feast of Tabernacles”.
Like the ‘wanderers’ described in “How to Know Higher Worlds” we must each establish our spiritual homeland. In spiritual science, this making of a spiritual home is called
“Building a Hut’.
“May you be sealed for a good year in the Book Of Life” – is the traditional greeting on Yom Kippur.
Friday Sept. 21, 2018, 7 -9pm, Saturday Sept. 22, 10 am – 5 pm, Sunday Sept. 23, 10 am -1pm
Workshop fee: $135.00 for RSB members, $160.00 for non-members Supply fee: $135.00*
***
Friday 28 September 2018 – COMMUNITY MEETING
at 7 pm with Ann Burfeind
Checking in on our local Anthroposophical Initiatives:
Are you a Waldorf Teacher, Branch Member, Christian Community Member, In the Arcturus Teacher Training, Involved with Anthroposophical Medicine, or Bio-Dynamics, Interested in serving the Being of Chicago…? Please come & bring a report, of the new school, or your Spiritual Scientific research…ETC…
We will also have a review of the How We Will Forum2
All in the spirit of Michaelmas
***
Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society, 4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
The Elderberries 3-Fold Space is currently available for rental on PEER SPACEfor classes, events, meetings, retreats, art exhibits, family parties, etc…
18 September 2018 – “Speaking with the Stars“: Asteroid hunters have a great opportunity to spot Vesta in the vicinity of one of the Milky Way’s brightest star-forming regions this week. Vesta resides now in western Sagittarius, a region currently hosting the major planet Saturn.
Vesta is the virgin goddess of the hearth, home, & family in Roman religion. She was rarely depicted in human form, & was often represented by the fire of her temple. Entry to her temple was permitted only to her priestesses, the Vestals, who tended the sacred fire at the hearth in her temple. She was the daughter of Saturn & Ops, & sister of Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Juno, & Ceres. Her closest Greek equivalent is Hestia.
Vesta is a few degrees southwest of Saturn & the Lagoon Nebula (M8) tonight.
Although autumn arrives with the equinox this coming weekend, the Summer Triangle remains prominent in the evening sky. Look high in the west after darkness falls & your eyes will fall on the brilliant star Vega in the constellation Lyra the Harp. Vega is the brightest member of the Triangle.
***
Duncan Regehr.
Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction. ~ Ray Bradbury
900- Feast Day of Saint Richardis, was the Holy Roman Empress, born in Alsace. She married Charles the Fat & was crowned with him in Rome by Pope John VIII The marriage was childless.
Charles’ reign was marked by internal and external strife, caused primarily by the constant plundering of Norman raiders on the northern French coast. By 887, Charles appears to have succumbed to fits of madness. During this crisis, Richardis attempted to rule in her husband’s stead, but was unsuccessful. In an effort to bring down the over-powerful and hated Liutward, Charles’ archchancellor, he & Richardis were accused by Charles of adultery. Charles asserted that their marriage was unconsummated & demanded a divorce.
In a bid to assure him of her innocence, she finally assented to an ordeal by fire. Barefoot, & wearing a shirt covered in wax, the flames nevertheless refused to touch her. Disheartened by her husband’s continued mistrust, Richardis left the imperial palace & wandered into the forest. There she was visited by an angel, who ordered her to found a convent in a certain spot, which a bear would indicate to her. In Val d’Eleon, at the banks of the river, she saw a bear scratching in the dirt. There she built the abbey of Andlau.
An alternative legend recounts that Richardis found the mother bear grieving over her dead cub in the forest. When Richardis held the cub, it returned to life. After the working of this miracle, both mother & cub remained devoted to the saint for the rest of their lives.
1793 – The first cornerstone of the Capitol building is laid by George Washington
1812 – The 1812 Fire of Moscow dies down after destroying more than three-quarters of the city. Napoleon returns from the Petrovsky Palace to the Moscow Kremlin, spared from the fire.
1850 – The Fugitive Slave Act passed by the United States Congress as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests & Northern Free-Soilers. It required that all escaped slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters & that officials & citizens of free states had to cooperate in this law. Abolitionists nicknamed it the “Bloodhound Law” for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves
1851 – First publication of The New-York Daily Times, which later becomes The New York Times
1873 – Panic of 1873: The U.S. bank Jay Cooke & Company declares bankruptcy, triggering a series of bank failures.
1882 – The Pacific Stock Exchange opens.
1895 – Booker T. Washington delivers the “Atlanta compromise” address. The agreement was that Southern blacks would work &submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic education & due process in law. Blacks would not agitate for equality, integration, or justice, & Northern whites would fund black educational charities
1906 – A typhoon with tsunami kills an estimated 10,000 people in Hong Kong
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
1909 – 1st mention by Rudolf Steiner of the two Jesus Children. GA 114
1910 – In Amsterdam, 25,000 demonstrate for general suffrage
“…Now at a certain time a being was born in Central America who set himself a definite task within this culture. The old, original inhabitants of Mexico linked the existence of this being with a definite idea or picture. They said he had entered the world as the son of a virgin who had conceived him through super earthly powers, inasmuch as it was a feathered being from the heavens who impregnated her. When one makes researches with the occult powers at one’s disposal, one finds that the being to whom the ancient Mexicans ascribed a virgin birth was born in the year 1 A.D. and lived to be thirty-three years old. These facts emerge when, as stated, one examines the matter with occult means. This being set himself a quite specific task.
At this same time in Central America another man was born who was destined by birth to become a high initiate of Taotl. This man had in his previous earthly incarnations been initiated as described above and through the fact that he had many, many times repeated the procedure involving the excision of the stomach, which has been described to you and which there is no need to recapitulate, he had been gradually equipped with a lofty earthly and super-earthly knowledge. This was one of the greatest black magicians, if not the greatest ever to tread the earth; he possessed the greatest secrets that are to be acquired on this path. He was faced directly with a momentous decision as the year 30 A.D. approached, namely whether or not, as a single human individual, to become so powerful through continuous initiation that he would come to know a certain basic secret. Through knowledge of this secret he would have then been able to give such a shock and impetus to the coming evolution of man on earth that humanity in the fourth and fifth post-Atlantean epochs would have been thrown into terrible darkness, with the result that what the ahrimanic powers had striven for in these epochs could have come into existence.
Then a conflict began between this super-magician and the being to whom a virgin birth was ascribed, and one finds from one’s research that it lasted for three years. The being of the virgin birth bore a name that, when we try to transpose it into our speech approximates Vitzliputzli. He is a human person who, among all these beings who otherwise only moved about in spirit form and could only be perceived through atavistic clairvoyance, in actual fact became man, so the story goes, through his virgin birth. The three year conflict ended when Vitzliputzli was able to have the great magician crucified, and not only through the crucifixion to annihilate his body but also to place his soul under a ban, by this means rendering its activities powerless as well as its knowledge. Thus the knowledge assimilated by the great magician of Taotl was killed. In this way Vitzliputzli was able to win again for earthly life all those souls who, as indicated, had already received the urge to follow Lucifer and leave the earth. Through the mighty victory he had gained over the powerful black magician, Vitzliputzli was able to imbue men again with the desire for earthly existence and successive incarnations.
Nothing survived from these regions of what might have lived on if the mysteries of Taotl had borne fruit. The forces left over from the impulse that lived in these mysteries survived only in the etheric world. They still exist subsensibly, belonging to what would be seen if, in the sphere of the spirit, one could light a paper over a solfatara. The forces are there under the covering of ordinary life, which is like the surface crust of a volcano.
So, on one side, what came from the inspirer of Genghis Khan entered into the forming of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and, on the other, what worked on as the ghost or spectre of the events that had taken place in the Western Hemisphere. No more than a feeble echo was left of this when the Europeans discovered America. But it is even known in ordinary history that many Europeans who set foot on Mexican-American soil were murdered by the decadent priesthood, which, though no longer as evil as in earlier times, still cut out the stomach, as I described. This was the fate of many Europeans who trod the soil of Mexico after the discovery of America, and the fact is even known to history.
In Vitzliputzli these people revered a Sun being who was born of a virgin, as I have said. When one investigates it occultly, one finds that he was the unknown contemporary in the Western Hemisphere of the Mystery of Golgotha. One can, indeed, also describe these things superficially as modern people like to do to avoid giving pain. If, however, one desires real knowledge, the one must cast a fleeting glance upon these concrete facts of the past, as we have done today. Yes, when we regard this modern human soul, we see how below, in the direction of the subsensible, and how above, in the direction of the super-sensible, it is exposed to great and serious dangers, and how forces play in that remain unknown. Yet it is good that they remain unknown because it is only in this way that the fifth post-Atlantean epoch can develop. The veil must be lifted now so that consciousness may be added to what still remains unconsciousness, because enough time has passed since America has been discovered. Otherwise, if consciousness did not gradually enter, these forces would become paramount, and the relatively beneficent conditions of the time of unconsciousness would turn around and become the curse of humanity. After all, many things, which in the way they have made their appearance have proved a benefit, bear the inherent tendency to become a curse to mankind.” ~Rudolf Steiner
1919 – The Netherlands gives women the right to vote
1927 – The Columbia Broadcasting System goes on the air
1936 – Deathday of Konrad Burdach, author of Faust and Moses
1939 – The Nazi propaganda broadcaster known as Lord Haw-Haw begins transmitting.
1940 – The British liner SS City of Benares is sunk by German submarine U-48; those killed include 77 child refugees
1943 – The Jews of Minsk are massacred at Sobibór
1944 – The British submarine HMS Tradewind torpedoes Jun’yō Maru, 5,600 killed
1947 – The National Security Council & the Central Intelligence Agency are established in the United States under the National Security Act
1960 – Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations
1988 – End of pro-democracy uprisings in Myanmar after a bloody military coup. Thousands, mostly monks & civilians (primarily students), are killed
2001 – First mailing of anthrax letters from Trenton, New Jersey in the 2001 anthrax attacks.
2007 – Buddhist monks join anti-government protesters in Myanmar, starting what some call the Saffron Revolution
***
Valerie Sjodin
POD (Poem Of the Day)
~my words are forged in star-fire
that i may speak the language of earth
a sacrifice on the altar of angels…
~hag
***
THE “AMERICAN” or “THREEFOLD” VERSE byRudolf Steiner given toRalph Courtney, a pioneer of Anthroposophy in North America for the Threefold Group in New York City, which later established the Threefold Community in Spring Valley (now Chestnut Ridge). This verse for the American spirit speaks of the inner unity of human beings and of support from the spiritual world for our efforts:
May our feeling penetrate to the center of our hearts – And seek, in love, to unite with those who share our goals, And with the spirits who look down benevolentlyon our hearts earnest strivings. Sending us strength from realms of light, to illuminate our love.
Friday Sept. 21, 2018, 7 -9pm, Saturday Sept. 22, 10 am – 5 pm, Sunday Sept. 23, 10 am -1pm
***
Friday 28 September 2018 – COMMUNITY MEETING at 7 pm with Ann Burfeind
Checking in on our local Anthroposophical Initiatives:
Are you a Waldorf Teacher, Branch Member, Christian Community Member, Involved with Anthroposophical Medicine, or Bio-Dynamics, Interested in serving the Being of Chicago…? Please come & bring a report, of the new school, or your Spiritual Scientific research…ETC…
We will also have a review of the How We Will Forum2
All in the spirit of Michaelmas
***
AGM 2018 Friday, Oct 5 – Sunday, Oct 7 in New Orleans, Louisiana
17 September 2018 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The waxing gibbous Moon stands close to Saturn’s upper left this evening. Look for Saturn due south as darkness falls this week. It shines more than a full magnitude brighter than any of the background stars in its host constellation, Sagittarius.
***
History by William Baziotes
I turn to history not for lessons but to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for myself a sense of responsibility for the state of the human conscience ~ Zbigniew Herbert (from Chris Manvell)
1179 – Deathday of Hildegard of Bingen, “the Sybil of the Rhine” a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, & polymath.
She is considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. One of her works as a composer, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama, the oldest surviving morality play. She wrote theological, botanical, & medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, & poems, while supervising miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, Scivias. She is also noted for the invention of a constructed language known as Lingua Ignota.
Hildegard 1st saw “The Shade of the Living Light” at the age of three. Hildegard was hesitant to share her visions, but at the age of 42, Hildegard received instruction from God, to “write down that which you see and hear.” Still hesitant to record her visions, Hildegard became physically ill. The illustrations recorded in the book of Scivias were visions that Hildegard experienced, causing her great suffering: “But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] I set my hand to the writing. While I was doing it, I sensed, the deep profundity of scriptural exposition; and, raising myself from illness by the strength I received, I brought this work to a close – though just barely – in ten years. (…) And I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, ‘Cry out therefore, and write thus!’
Hildegard’s visions caused her to see humans as “living sparks” of God’s love.
On 17 September 1179, when Hildegard died, her sisters claimed they saw two streams of light appear in the skies & cross over the room where she was dying.
“Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around Him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honor. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground, and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along. Thus am I, a feather on the breath of God.”
Howard Chandler Christy
1787 – The United States Constitution is signed in Philadelphia
1859 – Joshua A. Norton declares himself “Norton I, Emperor of the United States.”Born in England, Norton spent most of his early life in South Africa, he emigrated to San Francisco with an inheritance, but he lost his fortune investing in Peruvian rice & Norton’s public prominence faded. He reemerged to lay claim to the position of Emperor of the United States, & ‘Protector of Mexico’. He was treated deferentially in San Francisco, ¤cy issued in his name was honored in the establishments he frequented.
Though some considered him insane or eccentric, citizens of San Francisco celebrated his regal presence & his proclamations, such as his order that the United States Congress be dissolved by force & his numerous decrees calling for a bridge crossing connecting San Francisco to Oakland, &a corresponding tunnel to be built under San Francisco Bay.
At his funeral two days later, nearly 30,000 people packed the streets of San Francisco to pay homage. Norton has been immortalized as the basis of characters in the literature of writers Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christopher Moore, Maurice De Bevere, Selma Lagerlöf, & Neil Gaiman
1908 – The Wright Flyer flown by Orville Wright, with Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge as passenger, crashes, killing Selfridge. He becomes the first airplane fatality
1916 –Manfred von Richthofen (“The Red Baron“), a flying ace of the German Luftstreitkräfte, wins his first aerial combat near Cambrai, France, in World War I
1928 – The Okeechobee hurricane strikes southeastern Florida, killing more than 2,500 people. It is the third deadliest natural disaster in United States history, behind the Galveston hurricane of 1900 & the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
1939 –The Soviet Union joins Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in World War II
1939 –German submarine U-29 sinks the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous in World War II
1948 – The Lehi, also known as the Stern gang, assassinates Count Folke Bernadotte, who was appointed by the United Nations to mediate between the Arab nations & Israel. Lehi = “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel” was a Zionist paramilitary organizationfounded by Avraham (“Yair”) Stern in Palestine. Its aim was to evict the British authorities from Palestine by force, allowing unrestricted immigration of Jews & the formation of a Jewish state, a ‘new totalitarian Hebrew republic’
1961 – Deathday of Dag Hammarskjöld, Swedish diplomat, economist, author & the second secretary-general of the United Nations. Soon after his appointment Hammarskjöld was interviewed on radio by Edward R. Murrow. In this talk he declared: “But the explanation of how man should live a life of active social service in full harmony with himself as a member of the community of spirit, I found in the writings of those great medieval mystics [Meister Eckhart and Jan van Ruysbroek] for whom ‘self-surrender’ had been the way to self-realization, and who in ‘singleness of mind’ and ‘inwardness’ had found strength to say yes to every demand which the needs of their neighbours made them face, and to say yes also to every fate life had in store for them when they followed the call of duty as they understood it.”
He was en route to negotiate a cease-fire on 18 September when his plane crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia. Hammarskjöld & fifteen others died in the crash. The circumstances of the incident are still not clear. There is some evidence that suggests the plane was shot down. Göran Björkdahl (a Swedish aid worker) wrote in 2011 that he believed Dag Hammarskjöld’s 1961 death was a murder committed in part to benefit mining companies like Union Minière, after Hammarskjöld had made the UN intervene in the Katanga crisis. Björkdahl based his assertion on interviews with witnesses of the plane crash & on archival documents. Former U.S. President Harry Truman commented that Hammarskjöld “was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said ‘when they killed him’.”
1978 – The Camp David Accords brokered by President Jimmy Carter, is signed by Egyptian PresidentAnwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime MinisterMenachem Begin
2001 – The New York Stock Exchange reopens for trading after the September 11 attacks, the longest closure since the Great Depression
2006 – Fourpeaked Mountain in Alaska erupts, marking the first eruption for the long-dormant volcano in at least 10,000 years
2011 – Occupy Wall Street movement begins in Zuccotti Park, New York City
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Hilma Af Klint
~ Holy Spirit,
giving life to all life, moving all creatures,
root of all things,
washing them clean,
wiping out their mistakes,
healing their wounds,
you are our true life,
luminous, wonderful,
awakening the heart
from its ancient sleep.~ Hildegard of Bingen
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Hilma Af Klint
Cloud Gazing
A very interesting meditation cloud gazing; part Rorschach, part cosmic divination. Recently I have felt called to watch the sky every day. Even for 5 minutes much can be revealed. I remain watchful & act as witness to the messages – in the formations, in the wind, in my body, in all of nature.
How is dawn speaking today, what will dusk want? Noon brings its own power. The robin’s song this year seems particularly urgent, yet lonesome. I send out gratitude & love, & listen for the echo of the elementals.
Moving through the clouds is that a choir of Angels, see it there…? They seem so active & willing to connect with those who are keen to look up & read the starry script, to read the augury without falling into illusion, to witness without judgment, to get out of the way & yet to participate fully.
Was it Ben Franklin who was an initiate in weather watching?
The etheric realm is an open secret for those who have eyes to see, look up & join in the co-creation of our evolution.
Workshop fee: $135.00 for RSB members, $160.00 for non-members Supply fee: $135.00*
Veil Painting is a watercolor technique special to artists working with the writings of Rudolf Steiner. Transparent watercolors are thinned far more than usual and glazed over one another on white paper to achieve subtle color washes, or ‘veils.’ The colors are never mixed anywhere but on the paper, and then only one at a time in a wash over dry colors. To avoid loss of time to stretching watercolor paper and waiting for it to dry overnight, students will use 300# cold pressed watercolor paper or heavy illustration board for wet media. We will focus on technique and work with painting motifs using Goethe’s Luster Colors (red, yellow, and blue) and Image Colors (white, black green, and peach), also exploring Goethe’s use of Characteristic Colors, Non-characteristic Colors, and Harmonious Colors in varying combinations on small panels, the Goethean color wheel on a larger panel, with space for a free painting to try and find an image out of the color itself. Supplies: All supplies will be provided for participants out of the supply fee, and will become their personal materials to take home including; brushes, paper, color, jars, rags, tape, ruler, pencil, sharpener, eraser. Participants will be completely equipped to work at home after the workshop, including colors and where to buy additional supplies when needed.
To Register Send check by September 7th to: David Dozier 1050 Columbia Ave. #3E Chicago, IL 60626
*Anyone taking the workshop that believes they already have all the tools and materials they need and wishes to avoid paying the supply fee should speak to Mr. Dozier personally at 773-627-0060, and review their tools and materials against the supply list with him by September 1st, since supplies have to ordered at least two weeks in advance.
Bio: Since 1997 David A. Dozier has taught art history, digital art, painting in oils, pastels and watercolor, black & white drawing, calligraphy and block printing at the Chicago Waldorf School, as well as drawing skills to adults in the Arcturus Rudolf Steiner Education program. He has a Master’s degree in Education (with a Certificate in Waldorf Education) from Antioch New England Graduate School, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Visual Communication from Layton School of Art and Design with academic accreditation from Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI.
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Friday 28 September 2018 – COMMUNITY MEETING at 7 pm with Ann Burfeind
Checking in on our local Anthroposophical Initiatives:
Are you a Waldorf Teacher, Branch Member, Christian Community Member, Involved with Anthroposophical Medicine, or Bio-Dynamics, Interested in serving the Being of Chicago…? Please come & bring a report, of the new school, or your Spiritual Scientific research…ETC…
We will also have a review of the How We Will Forum2
All in the spirit of Michaelmas
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AGM 2018 Friday, Oct 5 – Sunday, Oct 7 in New Orleans, Louisiana
The newly renovated (& lazured) Elderberries 3-Fold Space is currently available for rental on PEER SPACE for classes, events, meetings, retreats, art exhibits, family parties, etc…
World Peace Day
Caravaggio
David Newbatt
John Stolfo
Mars by WilliamTurners
