17 June 2016 – International World Day to Combat Desertification & Drought.

Tonight the Big Dipper is beginning to drop a little into the northwestern skies from its position at the top of the sky in May. A Seneca Indian legend tells us that the bowl of the dipper is really a bear, with the closest star to the bowl a hunter with a bow & arrow. The middle star is a hunter with a cooking pot, & the third star is another hunter, gathering firewood to cook with.

1462 – Vlad Dracula (the Impaler) attempts to assassinate Mehmed II an Ottoman sultan forcing him to retreat from Wallachia

1631 – Mumtaz Mahal dies during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, will spend the next 17 years building her mausoleum, the .

1673 – French explorers Jacques Marquette & Louis Jolliet reach the Mississippi River & become the first Europeans to make a detailed account of its course

1839 – In the Kingdom of Hawaii, Kamehameha III issues the edict of toleration which gives Roman Catholics the freedom to worship in the Hawaiian Islands

1885 – The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor

1928 – Amelia Earhart began the flight that made her the first woman to successfully fly across the Atlantic Ocean

1940 – The Soviet Union occupied Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia

1967 – The People’s Republic of China announces a successful test of its first thermonuclear weapon

1972 – Watergate scandal begins: Five White House operatives are arrested for burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in an attempt by some members of the Republican party to illegally wiretap the opposition

1987 – With the death of the last individual of the species, the dusky seaside sparrow becomes extinct

1603 – Feast day of Joseph of Cupertino, Italian Franciscan friar who is honored as a Christian mystic & saint. He was said to have been remarkably unclever, but prone to miraculous levitation & intense ecstatic visions. He is the patron saint of air travelers, aviators, astronauts, people with a mental handicap, test takers & poor students.

1882 – Birthday of Igor Stravinsky, Russian pianist, composer, & conductor

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~I come

From light & To light

I return

My hands grasp the ring of colors

The gold beak of dawn

The blue eyes of day

The deep red blood of dusk

I gather

Myself, thought & bone

I come

To carry light

~hag

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Part 7 in: A Summary of THE ST. JOHN IMAGINATION, from ~the Four Seasons and the Archangels, Lecture 4, by Rudolf Steiner

In the Summer-Tide, through ‘the great window of heaven’ we experience an interaction between humanity & the sun forces, assisting us to develop an awareness of our Higher Ego. The summertime union between the sun & earth is actually a reunion between the divine gods of the spiritual sun & their offspring, humankind. We can contemplate this dynamic & bring it to life in our soul most strongly at this time.

We can seek to experience the Ego development of humankind by following the earnest gaze of the Archangel Uriel into the earth, guiding the union of the sun’s inner radiance with the being of the earth.

Like the call of conscience from John the Baptist, the need arises to let the light of the Higher Ego shine into our being, knowing that the union of creator & created is affected by the disharmony from the imperfect deeds of humanity.

We respond to the summertime call for a yearly ‘metanoia’ by reviewing our deeds of the past year, (like we do at the time of the Winter Solstice) while Uriel’s ‘eye of heaven’ gazes down upon us. Let us seek to know the will forces, that our deeds may add to the advancement of the earth’s being.

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Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg