22 August 2016 –Astro-Weather: Are you following Venus & Jupiter closing in on each other? After sunset today they’re 6° apart very low above the horizon due west. Jupiter is to Venus’s upper left. They’re heading toward a close conjunction on August 27th. Also, below, lower left of Jupiter, is faint & fading Mercury.

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ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

“The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history… It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.” ~Rachel Carson

Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary & the Queenship of  Mary– a logical follow-up to the Assumption, now celebrated on the octave day of that feast

392 –Eugenius elected – the last Roman Emperor to support polytheism

476 – Odoacer a soldier became the first King of Italy. His reign is commonly seen as marking the end of the Western Roman Empire

565 – Columbaa, Christian saint -one of the ‘Twelve Apostles of Ireland’ reports seeing a monster in Loch Ness, Scotland

1241 – Deathday of Pope Gregory IX, established the Papal Inquisition

1849 – The first air raid in history. Austria launches pilotless balloons against the city of Venice

1864 – Twelve nations sign the First Geneva Convention

1862 – Birthday of Claude Debussy

1902 – Cadillac Motor Company is founded

1902 – Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first President to ride in an automobile

1913 – 1^st performance of Rudolf Steiner’s 4^th Mystery Drama: The Souls’ Awakening

1932 – The BBC begins television broadcasting using John Logie Baird’s system

1941 – World War II: German troops begin the Siege of Leningrad

1944 – World War II: Holocaust of Kedros in Crete by German force

1947 – Deathday of Francis Delaisi, French social economist spoken of by Rudolf Steiner in ‘Fall of the Spirits of Darkness’ Lecture 14 Dornach, 28 October 1917 (see except below)

1961 – Ida Siekmann dies attempting to cross the Berlin Wall

1962 – The OAS attempts to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle

1971 – J. Edgar Hoover & John Mitchell announce the arrest of 20 of the Camden 28, a group of “Catholic left” anti-Vietnam War activists who executed a raid on a Camden, New Jersey draft board

1996 – Bill Clinton signs welfare reform into law, representing a major shift in US welfare policy

2006 – Russian passenger plane crashes over eastern Ukraine, killing all 170 people on board

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~The power of the Divine Mother encircles my spine

As the snakes entwine the caduceus…

Hidden in my rib cage

A holy poison of fiery Wisdom

Burns a hole in the mountain

& guides my tongue to sweetness…

~hag

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Lecture 14 Dornach, 28 October 1917

“For once, therefore, a man woke up and saw that what mattered was not to proclaim democracy but to see the full reality, not to follow slogans, but to see things as they are. This would be particularly important today, for people would then realize that the events which reign with such blood and terror over the whole of humanity are guided and directed from just a few centres. People will never realize this if they persist in the delusion that nation is fighting nation, and allow the European and American Press to lull them to sleep over the kinds of relations that are said to exist between nations. Everything said about antagonism and opposition between nations only exists to cast a veil over the true reasons. For we shall never arrive at the real truth if we feed on words in order to explain these events, but only if we point to actual people. The problem is that this tends to be unpalatable today. And the man who woke up and wrote these statements in 1910 also presented some highly unwelcome accounts in his book. He produced a list of fifty-five individuals who are the real rulers and exploiters of France. The list can be found in Francis Delaisi’s La Democratie et les Financiers, written in 1910; the same man has also written La Guerre qui vient, a book which has become famous. In his La Democratie et les Financiers you will find statements of fundamental significance. There you have someone who has woken up to reality. The book contains impulses which allow one to see through much of what we should see through today, and also to cut through much of the fog which is made to wash over human brains today. Here again, we must resolve to look to reality.

The book has, of course, been ignored. It does, however, raise issues which should be raised all over the world today, for they would teach people much about the reality which others intend to bury under all their declamations on democracy and autocracy and whatever the slogans may be. The book also gives an excellent exposition on the extremely difficult position in which members of parliament find themselves. People think they can vote according to their convictions. But you would have to know all the different threads which tie them to reality if you wanted to know why they vote for one thing and against another. Certain issues really must be raised. Delaisi does so. Thus, for example, he considers a member of parliament and asks the question: Which side should the poor man support? The people pay him three thousand francs a year and the shareholders pay him thirty thousand francs!’ To pose the question is to answer it. So the poor dear man gets his three-thousand-franc allowance from the people, and thirty thousand francs from the shareholders! I think you will agree it is a good piece of proof, a sign of real acumen, to say: How nice that a socialist, a man of the people like Millerand has gained a seat in parliament! Delaisi’s question goes in another direction. He asks: How far can someone like Millerand, who was earning thirty thousands francs a year for representing insurance companies, be independent?

So for once someone did wake up. He is well aware of the threads which run from the actions of such an individual to the different insurance companies. But such things, reported by someone who is awake and sees the truth, are ignored. It is, of course, only too easy to talk about democracy in the Western world. Yet if you wanted to tell people the truth you would have to say: ‘The man called so and so is doing this, and the one called so and so is doing that.’ Delaisi has found fifty-five men — not a democracy but fifty-five specific individuals — who, he says, govern and exploit France. There, someone has discovered the real facts, for in ordinary life, too, a feeling must awaken for the real facts..

It is not a bad thing to know these things, which are ingredients of reality. They must be seriously considered. And one is guided to develop something of a nose for reality when one takes up anthroposophy, whilst the materialistic education people have today, with innumerable channels opening into it from the Press, is designed to point not to the realities but to something which is cloaked in all kinds of slogans. And if someone does wake up, as Delaisi did, and writes about how things really are, how many people get to know about it? How many people will listen? They cannot listen, for it is buried by — well, by a life that again is ruled by the Press. Delaisi shows himself to be a bright person, someone who has gone to a lot of trouble to gain real insight. He is no blind follower of parliamentarianism, nor of democracy. He predicts that the things people think are so clever today will come to an end. He says so expressly, also with reference to the ‘voting machine’ — which is approximately how he puts it. He is entirely scientific and serious in his discourse on this parliamentary voting machine, for he understands the whole system which leads to these ‘voting machines’, where people are made to believe that a convinced majority is voting against a mentally unhinged minority. He knows that something else will have to take the place of this if there is to be healthy development.

This is not yet possible, for people would be deeply shocked if you were to tell them what will take its place. Only people initiated into spiritual science can really know this today. Forms which belong to the past will definitely not take its place. You need not be afraid that someone speaking out of anthroposophy will promote some kind of reactionary or conservative ideas; no, these will not be things of the past, but they will be so different from the ‘voting machine’ which exists today that people will be shocked and consider this madness. Nevertheless it will enter into the impulses of evolution in time. Delaisi, too, says: In organic development certain parts lose their original function and become useless but still persist for some time; in the same way, these parliaments will continue to vote for quite some time, but all real life will have departed from them.”

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA177/English/RSP1993/19171028p01.html

Blessings & Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg