11 January 2018 – Astro-Weather: After dinnertime the dim Little Dipper hangs straight down from Polaris, the end of its long handle — as if from a nail on the cold north wall of the sky. In warm June, by contrast, the Little Dipper’s bowl floats up from Polaris, like a helium balloon escaped from a summer party, trailing its string.
In the early dawn of Friday the 12th, the waning crescent Moon hangs to the lower left of Jupiter & Mars. It’s above Antares by a fairly similar distance.
Very far to their lower left, near the southeast horizon, find Mercury & Saturn as dawn brightens. They’re only about 1° apart. Mercury, on the right, is the brighter of the two.
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Vladamir Kush
“If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor.” ~Joseph Campbell
1825 – Birthday of Karl Julius Schroer, professor of German literature & language. Political developments in 1860 forced Schröer to leave Hungary for Vienna. In the following years, Schröer researched the folklore of the ethnic Germans, or Danube Swabians, of Hungary. As part of his research, Schröer discovered a Medieval cycle of Danube Swabian mystery plays in Oberufer, a village since engulfed by the Bratislava’s borough of Ružinov. Schröer collected manuscripts, made meticulous textual comparisons, & published his findings in the book Deutsche Weihnachtspiele aus Ungarn (“The German Nativity Plays of Hungary”) in 1857/1858. Several scholars later extended this work.
In Vienna, Schröer became a major figure in Goethe scholarship. He was a founding member of the Goethe Society of Vienna in 1878 & edited the society’s official publication, “Die Chronik”, from 1886 to 1894.
Schröer was especially devoted to Faust scholarship, editing the work & providing a commentary in a two-volume edition of that play. In 1884 he published one of his most well-known works, a text dedicated to Goethe’s biography, manner of poeticizing, & relation to women: “Goethe und die Liebe” (Goethe and Love). Schröer also edited a six-volume edition of Goethe’s dramas. He campaigned for the erection of a Goethe monument in Vienna, which was approved in 1894 with a design by Edmund Hellmann. Schröer died on 16 December 1900, one day after the monument was unveiled.
Karl Julius Schroer was Rudolf Steiner’s professor & the son of the educator & writer Tobias Gottfried Schröer. Steiner speaks about these 2 individualities in their former incarnations. Tobias as Socrates & Karl as the nun Hroswitha & Plato. See Karmic Relationships, Volume IV: Lecture X
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Jim Leasure
POD (Poem Of the Day)
~Today I invoke:
The Lady of the pyre –
Lady of the heat who burns up transgression
Her flame is sharp, Her fingers are orange sparks
She speaks with a tongue of far-reaching flame
Her hands are quick; She burns flesh into ash & light
She is beyond necessity,
She is the power of Freedom reborn…
Today I am Hers…
~hag
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The Anthroposophical Society’s annual theme for 2017/2018 asks the question: ‘How can the Foundation Stone Meditation promote peace-ability, a 100 years after the birth of the Social Three-folding Impulse’? (We worked with the Foundation Stone Meditation in speech & eurythmy on Epiphany this year)
Here are a few quotes from that correspondence sent out last year at this time:
“Rudolf Steiner pronounced this “new Apollonian word” of the “Know Yourself” for the first time on 25 December 1923, when he presented the result of his spiritual investigation of the human being, after a maturation period of over thirty years, clothed in the mantric words of the Foundation Stone Meditation.
When we work meditatively with the Foundation Stone, a “light of thoughts shines towards us” and enables us to draw new inspiration for our actions from the “spirit holding sway in the radiant light of thoughts around the dodecahedral stone of love”.
…it is essential today that each individual ‘I’ finds and experiences the original impulse anew. For this to happen, self-knowledge must not remain a subjective act, limited to the understanding of one’s own individuality, but we must seek to understand what is universally human in us and in others.
The objectivity of the Foundation Stone’s spirit light can transform the anthroposophical life. Rudolf Steiner saw the Foundation Stone as the ground on which individuals can erect a “building” together. In the years ahead we would like to use the three great exercises of “Spirit-Recalling”, “Spirit-Awareness” and Spirit Beholding” as the basis of our working together.
…working on the Foundation Stone can inspire elements of a socially effective and healing culture of the Spirit-Self. The three exercises must not be misunderstood as fixed spiritual techniques, however. They inspire spiritual life in three spheres and help us to develop the individual and social dimensions of Spirit Recalling, Spirit Awareness and Spirit Beholding, each of which constitutes a separate whole. Next year (2018) we will focus on Spirit Recalling in particular. May the forces we can draw from the source be our guiding star!
The appeal to the “human soul” addresses us as human beings in a threefold way. The three dimensions, in which we learn to feel ourselves cosmically embedded, connect us with the “Father-Spirit of the Heights”, the “Christ-Will encircling us” and the “Spirit’s world-thoughts”. This sense of being connected can gradually evolve as we respond through practice to the threefold call.
The very first invocation, “practice Spirit-Recalling”, inspires a wealth of questions, moods and exercises. Remembering is the central soul activity of the ‘I’.
In the cycle that accompanied the Christmas Conference (“World History and the Mysteries in the Light of Anthroposophy”) Rudolf Steiner looks at the memory of early humanity, inviting us to consider entirely different soul configurations. (We worked with these lectures 2 years ago during the Holy Nights)
Anthroposophy asks us to give a spiritual direction to our memory through practicing. In the context of the Christmas Conference Rudolf Steiner mentioned exercises for the enhancement of memory. In the lecture cycle “Mystery Knowledge and Mystery Centres” he recommends that we meditate on an event in our childhood or youth. (We have & will continue to explore this in our Biography work at the branch & with the Central Regional Council thru our new theme: Karma & Reincarnation)
In extending our gaze beyond the boundary of birth we enhance memory. We may ask ourselves what decisions were made before birth that have led to our present incarnation…awakening to other origins and destinies, because they determine our work, our encounters and relationships in an essential way and confront us with challenges as we try to live and work together, especially when we meet people with whom we don’t seem to “gel” or feel an affinity. Within the Anthroposophical Society we are called upon to work together as a community. A rightly cultivated memory can make us open for new ways of working together, for a new “sun karma” that will be a precondition for us to create a new culture of humaneness.
The review asks us to develop our will and our thinking at the same time.
We are not meant to dwell on our own thoughts and views when we look back, but on what comes to meet us in the outside world, in reverse order, so that our will can tear itself away from the physical. We expand into the world around us and experience how this world has formed us and what we have become through it. This kind of review, which can gradually become spirit-recalling, enables us to meet others in an imaginative way. The will effort involved in the review exercise promotes spirit-beholding. Because we have cultivated spirit-recalling, others can become image in us and express themselves imaginatively in spirit-beholding. And more than that: we find in this activity the foundations of the modern initiation experience.
Rudolf Steiner explained the transition from thinking to vision through will application…if we learn to behold the spiritual world through our will being, once it has become transparent, our thinking will become vision. By practicing spirit-recalling we will become able to achieve spirit-beholding and receive impulses for our actions from the spiritual world. In taking this step of working on the Foundation Stone Meditation together, out of the whole of anthroposophy, we hope to bring these fundamental exercises to life. ~Christiane Haid, Goetheanum Leadership and Jaap Sijmons, General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands.
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Lazure Workshop with Nancy Melvin
January 20-21, 2018, 9 am-5 pm Come to any or all of the sessions
$100 for the weekend (1/2 the proceeds go toward a new heating & cooling system for the branch)
Lazure is a technique for applying several layers of transparent color washes on walls, enlivening interior spaces with breathing, light filled color. We will Lazure the Branch’s newly renovated areas in anticipation of the Elderberries Cafe moving into the space. We will look to Steiner’s indications for public spaces in Urban areas for color schemes. The two day workshop will begin Saturday morning January 20th with color samples and participants can learn the brush technique which is radically different from painting with flat opaque paints. Then right away on the first day we will test color layers and apply the first several washes on the walls. There will be down time in between layers for participants to break for morning tea, for lunch and afternoon tea. The next day will add layers and depth to the colors as needed. By the end of the workshop you will learn all you need to know to go home and do this work in your home or office.
Nancy Melvin will lead the workshop, a former Waldorf Grades Teacher and teacher of wet on wet painting to children. She has lazured many Waldorf classrooms, most recently the EC extension of CWS in Lincoln Square and the foyer of CWS’s EC area as well as at the Angelic Organics Farm.
for more info. contact Nancy Melvin
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Spinning Destiny with the Fates – An Experiential Workshop with Hazel Archer Ginsberg
Saturday, 10 February 2018 – 10:30 AM – 4:30 PM
At the Theosophical Society 1926 N Main St, Wheaton, IL 60187
Come face the Fates & meet the Sibyls in the Light of Anthroposophy & ask: Does Fortune smile? Is Justice blind? How can I Co-Create with Destiny, to spin the thread of my life with integrity, to heal and clear the collective karma, & achieve my True Becoming?
Through the insights of Rudolf Steiner, the power of Myth-Telling, & Ritual-Tasks, such as interactive drumming, & Socratic questioning; we will journey into our soul-depths to stand before the “Daughters of Necessity” that we will transform to meet our true calling; asking: ‘What is my Highest Purpose?’
Please bring your own vegetarian lunch
$60 nonmembers $50 members $70 at the door
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg –Spiritual Midwife, Trans-denominational Minister, Essayist, Lecturer, Blogger – Anthroposopher, working as the Festivals Coordinator for the Rudolf Steiner Branch of Chicago. Founder of www.reverseritual.com
