Toni Carmine Salerno
“On New Year’s Eve our folk soul briefly releases us & consequently what we then think is perceived by the highest hierarchies & has the power in it to be brought into reality” ~Rudolf Steiner in conversation with H. Hahn, reported in Das Goetheanum, # 3, Jan 4, 1990
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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day: New years Eve address 1922: “What we have before us is especially important”
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
1335 – DeathDay of Pope Sylvester
1979 – Deathday of Ernst Lehrs – Writer, (Man & Matter) teacher, original Esoteric Circle Member, & Co-worker with Rudolf Steiner
1600 – East India Company Founded
1922- Burning of the First Goetheanum
“It is really the case that what was taught the Mystery-pupils at Ephesus concerning the primeval Word lies in the opening sentences of the John Gospel. It is indeed very fitting for Anthroposophists to turn their attention today, on this Cosmic New Year’s Eve, to these secrets which rest in the lap of time; for in a certain sense, that which stood here on the Dornach hill as the Goetheanum had become the centre of anthroposophical activity. The pain we feel today must continue to be pain, and will do so in everyone who was able to feel what the Goetheanum was intended to be. But to one who is striving upwards in his knowledge towards the spiritual all that takes place in the physical world must be for him an external manifestation, a picture of the spiritual which lies behind it. We as human beings striving after spiritual knowledge must be able to turn what has caused this pain into an opportunity for looking spiritually into a revelation which leads us into greater and greater depths. This Goetheanum was to have been a place in which one hoped to have spoken, and in which we have spoken again and again of those things which are connected with the opening words of the John Gospel:
“In the Primal Beginning was the Word — the Logos — and the Word was with God, and a god was the Word.”
Then the Goetheanum was destroyed by fire. This terrible picture of the burning Goetheanum arises before us. The pain may give birth to the summons to look ever more deeply into that which lives in the power of our thought, into this burning Goetheanum of New Year’s Eve. That is an experience, painful though it is, which leads us into greater and greater depths. That which we wished to have founded in this Goetheanum, which is connected with the John Gospel, these already form an enclosure within these burning consuming flames. And it is an important impulse which we may grasp: Let these flames be for us the occasion to look through them to other flames, those flames which once long ago consumed the Temple of Ephesus. Let us look upon them as a summons to us to try and fathom that which stands at the beginning of the John Gospel. Urged by this painfully sacred impulse, let us look back from the John Gospel to the Temple of Ephesus — which once was also burned down — and then in the Goetheanum flames, which speak indeed so painfully we shall receive a monition from that which streams into the Akasha with the burning flames of the Ephesian Temple.
Herostratus burns the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
Even today, if we look back on that night of misfortune, to those fierce flames of the Goetheanum conflagration, do we not still find in them the molten metals of the musical instruments which speak a language so pure and holy? Do we not find in these molten metals those musical instruments which conjured into the flames those wonderful colours — variously speaking colours — colours closely connected with the metals? Through connection with the metals something arises like memory in the earth-substance. This memory we have of that which was consumed with the Temple at Ephesus. And just as these two conflagrations may be connected, so the longing to investigate the meaning of “In the Primal Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and a god was the Word” may be connected somewhat with the words which again and again were made clear to the pupil at Ephesus: “Study the mystery of man in the small word, in the micrologos; thereby thou shalt make thyself ripe to experience in thyself the mystery of the macrologos.”
Saat Chion
Man is the microcosm as contrasted with the world which is the macrocosm, but he also bears within him the mysteries of the cosmos, and we can decipher the cosmic mystery contained in the first three verses of the John Gospel if we bear in mind in the right sense that into which, as into many other things also, the flames of the Goetheanum condensed, as if in written characters:
“Behold the Logos
In the burning fire
Seek the solution
In the house of Diana.”
The Akashic Record of the fire of last New Year’s Eve speaks these words very clearly, together with many others; and they make on us the demand to establish in the microcosm the micrologos, so that man may gain the understanding of that out of which his whole being has been formed — the macrocosmos — through the macrologos. ~Rudolf Steiner, Mystery Centres, Lecture IV, Dornach, December 1923
Jean Mignon
The Christmas Conference: World History in the light of Anthroposophy, Lecture VIII: The Burning of the Ephesian Temple and the Goetheanum, Dornach 31st December 1923 Morning The Envy of the Gods — The Envy of Human Beings
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Van James
Dear Friends – Come join our Conscious NYE!
“On New Year’s Eve our folk soul briefly releases us & consequently what we then think is perceived by the highest hierarchies & has the power in it to be brought into reality” ~Rudolf Steiner in conversation with H. Hahn, reported in Das Goetheanum, # 3, Jan 4, 1990
Doors Open 7:30 pm
at Our Family Friendly Gathering!Elderberries 4251 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago
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We are also seeking donations of: Hand Soap, Dish soap, Toilet Paper, Paper towel, Herbal Tea, Coffee
Storefront Room:
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Elderberries Middle Room:
8pm – 9:30pm Folk Dancing with Jutta & The High-Dukes (ALL AGES)
10:30pm Spacial Dynamics with Alex Boshell
Flex Space (Back Room):
Signs & Symbols on the Christmas Tree/ ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’ Display
9:30 pm – 10:30pm ‘Biography Work’ with Paulette Arnold
11:15 pm ‘Out with the Old’ – ‘Lead’ Casting to meet the Future & Bring in the New
MIDNIGHT: Labyrinth Walk with ~hag
“Anthroposophy opens its wellsprings, and the human will, carried by love, may draw from the waters. It brings to life love for humankind and thereby works creatively in impulses for moral action and true social interaction.” — Rudolf Steiner
EXPLORE HUMANITY’S PATH AND YOUR OWN.
Become a member of the Anthroposophical Society in America, then you are invited to Become a member of the Rudolf Steiner Branch
Membership is $50 (or pay what you can afford) per year –
Dear friends that is less than 14 cents a day!
Please consider offering your support.
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Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society, 4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
Check out our Web site! (Anthroposophical Society in America)The Elderberries 3-Fold Space & the Flex Space are available for rental on PEER SPACE for classes, events, meetings, retreats, art exhibits, family parties, etc…
