6 February 2017 – Astro-Weather: Venus appears brilliant in the early evening sky starting a half-hour after sunset. The Goddess of Love will remain the evening sky’s brightest point of light through late March, 10 times brighter than the second-brightest object, Jupiter. Venus lies among the background stars of Pisces the Fishes, slightly east of that constellation’s Circlet asterism.
David Borden
The sky’s biggest asterism (informal star pattern) is the Winter Hexagon, & the Moon shines inside it tonight & tomorrow night. Start with brilliant Sirius at the Hexagon’s bottom. Going clockwise from there, march through Procyon, Pollux & Castor, Menkalinan & Capella high up, Aldebaran down to Capella’s lower right, down to Rigel in Orion’s foot, & back to Sirius. Betelgeuse sparkles inside the Hexagon, south of the Moon this evening.
The Moon reaches perigee, the closest point in its orbit around Earth, at 10:02 am CST – 229,172 miles away from us
***
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
628 – Feast day of Amandus, the patron saint of all who produce beer: brewers, innkeepers & bartenders. He is also the patron of vine growers, vintners & of the Boy Scouts. He was of noble birth but at the age of twenty he became a monk against the wishes of his family. From there he went to became a pupil of bishop Austregisilus. There he lived in solitude in a cell for fifteen years, living on no more than bread & water.
After a pilgrimage to Rome, he was made a missionary bishop in France, he evangelized the pagan inhabitants of Ghent, later extending his field of operations to all of Flanders. Initially he had little success, suffering persecution & undergoing great hardships. However, after performing a miracle (bringing back to life a hanged criminal) the attitude of the people changed & he made many converts. He founded a monastery at Elnon where he served as abbot of for four years. Amandus was made a bishop in 628.
Returning to France in 630, he angered Dagobert I by attempting to have the king amend his life. In spite of the intervention of Saint Acarius, Amand was expelled from the kingdom. Later Dagobert asked him to return & tutor the heir to the throne. Amand however declined. In 633, Amandus founded two monasteries in Ghent; one at Blandinberg, & the other named for St. Bavo. His next missionary task was among the Slavic people of the Danube valley in present-day Slovakia but this was unsuccessful. Amand went to Rome & reported to the Pope. While returning to France, he is said to have calmed a storm at sea. In 639, he built an abbey near Tournay
1347 – Birthday of Dorothea of Montau, the guardian of the country of the Teutonic Knights & patron saint of Prussia. Born to a wealthy farmer from Holland, she was married at the age of 16 to the swordsmith Adalbrecht of Danzig (Gdańsk), an ill-tempered man in his 40s. Almost immediately after marrying she began to experience visions. Her husband had little patience with her spiritual experiences & abused her. Later, both made pilgrimages to Cologne, Aachen, & Einsiedeln. While Dorothea, with her husband’s permission, was on pilgrimage to Rome, he died in 1389. Of their nine children eight died. The surviving daughter, Gertrud, joined the Benedictines.
In the summer of 1391 Dorothea moved to Marienwerder (Kwidzyn), & with the blessing of the Teutonic Order, established a hermit’s cell against the wall of the cathedral. She never left that cell for the rest of her life.
Dorothea led a very austere life. Numerous visitors sought her advice & consolation, & she had visions & revelations
1465 – Birthday of Scipione del Ferro, Italian mathematician & theorist
1582 –Birthday of Mario Bettinus, Italian mathematician, astronomer, & philosopher
1612 – Birthday of Antoine Arnauld, French mathematician, theologian, & philosopher
1695 – Birthday of Nicolaus II Bernoulli, Swiss-Russian mathematician & theorist
1778 – American Revolutionary War: In Paris the Treaty of Alliance & the Treaty of Amity are signed by the United States & France signaling official recognition of the new republic
1748 – Birthday of Adam Weishaupt, German philosopher & founder of the Illuminati. After Pope Clement XIV’s suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, Weishaupt became a professor of canon law, a position that was held exclusively by the Jesuits until that time. In 1775 Weishaupt was introduced to the empirical philosophy of Johann Georg Heinrich Fede. Both Feder &Weishaupt would later become opponents of Kantian idealism.
“At a time, however, when there was no end of making game of and abusing secret societies, I planned to make use of this human foible for a real and worthy goal, for the benefit of people. I wished to do what the heads of the ecclesiastical and secular authorities ought to have done by virtue of their offices…” ~ Adam Weishaupt
On 1 May 1776 Weishaupt founded the “Illuminati” in the Electorate of Bavaria. He adopted the name of “Brother Spartacus” within the order. The character of the society was an elaborate network of spies & counter-spies. Each isolated cell of initiates reported to a superior, whom they did not know: a party structure that was effectively adopted by some later groups.
Weishaupt was initiated into the Masonic Lodge “Theodor zum guten Rath“, at Munich in 1777. His project of “illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason, which will dispel the clouds of superstition and of prejudice” was an unwelcome reform. He used Freemasonry to recruit for his own quasi-masonic society, with the goal of “perfecting human nature” through re-education to achieve a communal state with nature, freed of government & organized religion. Presenting their own system as pure masonry, Weishaupt & Adolph Freiherr Knigge, who organized his ritual structure, greatly expanded the secret organization.
Weishaupt’s character & intentions have been variously assessed: from those such as the Abbé Barruel & John Robison who regarded him as a ‘human devil’ & saw his mission as one of malevolent destructiveness, to those who view him as a humane & benign, albeit willful, social reformer. Writing on this topic, Dr. Tony Page comments: “Weishaupt’s plan was to educate Illuminati followers in the highest levels of humanity and morality (basing his teachings on the supremacy of Reason, allied with the spirit of the Golden Rule of not doing to others what one would not wish done to oneself), so that if Illuminati alumni subsequently attained positions of significance and power (such as in the fields of education and politics), they could exert a benevolent and uplifting influence upon society at large. His project was utopian and naively optimistic, and he himself was certainly not without flaws of character – but neither he nor his plan was evil or violent in and of themselves. It is one of the deplorable and tragic ironies of history that a man who tried to inculcate virtue, philanthropy, social justice and morality has become one of the great hate-figures of 21st-century ‘conspiracy’ thinking.”
After Weishaupt was exiled, he received the assistance of Duke Ernest II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg & lived in Gotha writing a series of works on illuminism, including A Complete History of the Persecutions of the Illuminati in Bavaria (1785), A Picture of Illuminism (1786), An Apology for the Illuminati (1786), & An Improved System of Illuminism (1787).
After Weishaupt’s Order of Illuminati was banned & its members dispersed, it left behind no enduring traces of an influence, not even on its own former members, who went on in the future to develop in quite different directions.
1820 – The first 86 African American immigrants sponsored by the American Colonization Society depart New York to start a settlement in present-day Liberia
1895 – Birthday of Babe Ruth
1918 – British women over the age of 30 get the right to vote
1951 – The Broker, a Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train derails near Woodbridge Township, New Jersey. The accident kills 185 people & injures over 500 more. The wreck is one of the worst rail disasters in American history
1952 – Elizabeth II becomes queen regnant of the United Kingdom & the other Commonwealth realms upon the death of her father, George VI. At the exact moment of succession, she was in a tree house at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya
1959 – Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments files the first patent for an integrated circuit
1959 – At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile is accomplished
1976 – In testimony before a United States Senate subcommittee, Lockheed Corporation president Carl Kotchian admits that the company had paid out approximately $3 million in bribes to the office of Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka
1989 – The Round Table Talks start in Poland, thus marking the beginning of the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe
1996 – Birgenair Flight 301 crashed off the coast of the Dominican Republic, & all 189 people inside the airplane are killed. This is the worst accident/incident involving a Boeing 757
2012 – A 6.9 magnitude earthquake hits near the central Philippines off the coast of Negros Island causing at least 151 deaths & injuring 112 others
2013 – A 8.0 magnitude earthquake hits the Solomon Islands killing 101 people & injuring 117 others
2016 – A 6.4 magnitude earthquake hits southern Taiwan, killing at least 138 people & injuring over 530 more
***
Catherine Molland
POD (Poem Of the Day)
~Good sore
Like wiggling a loose tooth…
The shoveling & sledding
Loosening the whole of me
Thump blood mingling
With the elementals awakening…
~hag
***
Helena Nelson Reed
Mysteries of the Celtic Goddess Brigid
Thursday February 9th 2017 -7 pm
at the Theosophical Society in America
1926 North Main Street
Wheaton, IL 60187
Invoking the Practical Alchemy of the Celtic Triple Goddess Brigid
To Purify, Awaken, & Galvanize Your Head, Heart, and Hands
Brigid’s festival is the 1st of the cross-quarter days in the wheel of the year, a time of spiritual re-dedication and initiation. Brigid invites us to forge and shape ourselves, as the tools of our own destiny. Come Renew Yourself. Together we will thaw the winter & rouse the mysteries growing within…
Hazel Archer Ginsberg is a Spiritual Midwife, and Trans-denominational Minister, working in an eclectic style that inspires connections – initiating us into the magic, waiting to be revealed, in the cycle of the seasons. Festivals Coordinator of the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society. Lecturer, Promoter, Blogger, Poet & Performance Artist. www.ReverseRitual.com.
$10 nonmembers $5 members
