17 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: Now the Moon shines below the Great Square of Pegasus. From the Great Square’s left corner extends a big line of three stars, running to the lower left, that mark the head, backbone & leg of the constellation Andromeda. The line of three includes the Square’s corner
Upper left from the end of this line, you’ll find W-shaped Cassiopeia tilting up
Skywatchers with an unobstructed horizon toward the west-southwest should keep an eye out for Venus this week, minutes after sunset, it shines so brilliantly that it stands out against the bright twilight. The star Spica, is to her lower left
***
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)
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
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 organization founded 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 President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem 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
***
Hilma Af Klint
~In slanted sunlight O my soul
The ripening fruits of my thinking are aroused in certainty,
For I sense an essence kindred to my own…
Joyfully I can perceive
The Autumn-Spirt waking…
& then I know
That winter will spring in me
Like Summer of the soul…
***
Hilma Af Klint
Inner Sanctum – a guided imagination:
Let us take our breath into our thinking, bringing our awareness inward, into the secret reaches of our inner sanctum…
Penetrate to the heart of the core of the root…
Peer down through the cracks in the surface, all the way to the center…
Treat the darkness there, as the source, of light, a cleverly disguised treasure, waiting to be re-discovered…a repository of raw material that will fuel the fires of inspiration, a place where we can go to practice the high art of redemption…
Let’s dare to be curious about the amazing sacraments that lie beneath the obvious questions…To open that mysterious door, that leads to the even more mysterious door, that will take us to the most private, yet inclusive, fertile oasis of all…as we aspire to wrestle tenderly with the unripe side of our nature, until it agrees to share its hidden treasures with the rest of us…
Then the immediate future, the eternal now, will bring cathartic revelations leading to spiritual insights & ingenious changes in the way we dance our life…
You are potentially a genius, we all are…Perhaps not in the same way that Einstein & Beethoven were, but still: We possess some brilliant capacity or set of skills that is exquisitely unique…
We are a masterpiece unlike any other that has ever lived…& you know what…the precise instructions we need to ripen into that glorious Genie have always been with us…The master plan…our special mission…our personal soul code…our secret song, that says, it’s our birthright to dance daily with the Divine Intelligence…
We have the power & the privilege to ask ‘The Source’ very specific questions about what we need to do NOW in order to activate more of our soul’s code, & to then receive a very specific answer…
So what question will you ask the Divine Intelligence today, as you commune in the sacred dance of yourself? …
Breathe in the Q breathe out the answer…open to receive it…breathe in the Q as you embody your answer in the healing moment of the now…
The Question is Love & Love Is the Answer…
Breathe in the Q breathe out the answer…& as you let yourself ripen & become the answer…just breathe & be…
And then slowly come, slowly come back into the body of this now…breathe in the now…& begin to renew your connection to the circle of life…bring your awareness back to the unity of the universe…into the sacred dance of your life…with the milk & manna still lingering on your lips…mingling with the salt of your skin…ready to be turned into honey-mead…we take the marriage feast back to the ring, into the circle that never stops…
Then Out into the world, to feed life with Loves healing mystery…grounded in every cell of our bodies…connected to the stars in our eyes…lived with every breath…as we take in the power we’ve raised in our imaginative thinking to fuel & feed our ‘balance in Change’…
See you in the circle
***
Michaelmas Festival: 7pm –9pm Friday 30 September, 2016
Optional Community Potluck Dinner 5pm – 6:45pm at The Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago
Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning
7pm – The Midwest Eurythmy Group will perform the Michaelmas Verse from Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul
Activating Our ‘Gemut’: The mind warmed by a loving heart & stimulated by the soul’s imaginative power – Hazel Archer Ginsberg
Copper Rod Eurythmy: ALL
If I’m to be a valiant knight, Then there’s a battle I must fight , And I must choose right from the start, Not strength of arm But strength of heart, My sword shall of good steel be made, And love the keenness of the blade
Grimm’s Tale “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” by Laura Donkel
Verse for the Michaelic Age: ALL
We must eradicate from the soul all fear and terror of what approaches us from the future. We must acquire serenity in all feelings and sensations about the future.
We must look forward with absolute equanimity to whatever may come. And we must think only that whatever comes is given to us by a cosmic guidance full of wisdom.
It is part of what we must learn in this age, namely, to live without any security in material existence and to live with pure trust in the ever-present help of the spiritual world.
Truly, nothing else will do if our courage is not to fail us. For this let us seek awakening to the reality of the spirit from within ourselves, every morning and every evening. ~Rudolf Steiner
Piano & Voice – Kristen Wray & David Wray performing Nacht und Träume + Ganymed – By Franz Schubert. Kristen Wray is a fiber and metal weaving artist, an energy healing practitioner, as well as a classically trained singer. David Wray is a classics professor at the University of Chicago specializing in ancient Roman poetry. Kristen and David regularly perform together in music student recitals on the university campus.
$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged
For more info. Contact Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer Ginsberg Hazel@ReverseRitual.com
