2 November 2016 – Astro-Weather: The Moon hangs above Saturn low in the southwest, while much-brighter Venus looks on from the left. And can you still detect Antares below them, right down near the horizon?

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 Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

 ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

HEALING WILL COME TO OUR AGE when the thoughts and ideas that are applied to social conditions and political life are in living contact with spiritual reality. ~Rudolf Steiner

Casper David Fredrich

All Souls’ Day

1699 – Birthday of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, French painter & educator

1795 – The French Directory, a five-man revolutionary government, is created, which governed France until it was overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte in the Coup of 18 Brumaire (8-9 November 1799) & replaced by the Consulate. It gave its name to the final four years of the French Revolution.

1755 – Birthday of Marie Antoinette, Austrian-French queen consort of Louis XVI of France

1920 –KDKA of Pittsburgh starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast is the result of the United States presidential election

1930 – Haile Selassie is crowned emperor of Ethiopia.

1936 – The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is established

1936 – The British Broadcasting Corporation initiates the BBC Television Service

1965 – Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, sets himself on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war

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POD (Poem Of the Day)

~The Scythe
Singing against the whetstone
Are my thoughts
Sharpening in the dark
~hag

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All Soul’s’ Day

Most cultures & many great minds throughout the ages have cultivated a connection with those who have passed through the gate of death.

“This is what it comes down to: that we learn to experience that those who have passed through the gate of death have only assumed another form. Having died, they stand before our feelings like those who, through life circumstances, have traveled to distant lands, where we can follow them only later. We have therefore nothing to bear but a time of seeming separation. Spiritual science must help us learn to feel & experience this in the most living way we can”. ~ Rudolf Steiner, 1915

Pre-Christian rites for the deceased retained such a strong hold on the imagination that a liturgical commemoration was not observed until the early Middle Ages, when monastic communities began to mark an annual day of prayer for the departed members.

In the middle of the 11th century, St. Odilo, abbot of Cluny, France, decreed that all monasteries offer special prayers & sing the Office for the Dead on November 2, the day after the feast of All Saints. The custom spread from Cluny & was finally adopted throughout the Roman Church.

The underpinning of the feast is the acknowledgment of the connection of humanity with the spiritual world. Since few people achieve perfection in this life but, rather, go to the grave with work still to be done, some period of purification is necessary before a soul comes face-to-face with the gods. The Council of Trent affirmed a purgatory state (Anthroposophers would call it Kamaloca) & insisted that the prayers of the living can speed the process of purification.

“Know the spiritual world! Then, among the many other blessings that humanity will gain will be this: that the living and the dead will be able to form a unity”. ~Rudolf Steiner, November 7, 1916

Verses for Our Beloved Dead

May my heart-love reach to soul-love.
May my love’s warmth shine to spirit-light.
Thus, I draw near to you.
Thinking spiritual thoughts WITH you,
Feeling cosmic love IN you,
Willing in spirit THROUGH you –
Weaving with you
One in experience. ~Rudolf Steiner

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May my love BE for you
In the spirit-realm.
May my seeking soul find your soul.
May MY thinking of YOUR being
Ease your cold,
Ease your heat.
In this way, we shall be united;
I with you ,
You with me. ~Rudolf Steiner

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“I have made ready a room
here in my heart
with walls of warmth
and windows of color
towards every side of the cosmos.

Oceans, mountains, and clouds are without.
within — loving and light.
And here I invite you to come,
dear being I love.

Lead me in what you have learned
now you have left your body
after so long suffering
and become a heavenly star:
the up-rising in dying!”

~Albert Steffan
From the collection “The Power for Resurrection’s Flight”

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Alex Grey

Join us for our Annual All Souls Festival

Especially scheduled this year on Election Night Tuesday 8 November 2016

Potluck 6 pm, Festival 7 pm – 9 pm

Get away from the media frenzy- As We Create a Healing Sanctuary thru Story & SongTo Honor Our Dearly Departed working with us from the Spiritual World

“Feel how we gaze lovingly into heights that now call you to other work.
May your power reach out from spirit-realms to the friends you left behind.

Hear our soul’s request sent to you in confidence;
We need here, for our earthly work, strong power from spirit lands-
We thank our friends now dead for this.

A hope that makes us happy, a loss that pains us deeply:
Let us hope that you light our lives, far-and-near, un-lost,
A soul-star in the spiritual firmament.”  ~Rudolf Steiner

Nancy Melvin will lead us in a song-circle

Engage with Columbia  the Folk-Spirit of America, & The Founding Mothers & Fathers of our country, as well as the Native Americans who were here before uswith Hazel Archer Ginsberg 

Contact Deborah Rogers with the names of your beloved ones who have died this year, to be read in the circle beewisdom33@yahoo.com

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Saturday  12 November  2016 Closing event

Calaj.com Artists Matthew Schaefer and Janet Trierweiler Schaefer present:

“Silent Lecture” Art Exhibit & Discussion 

3pm – 8pm Paintings on view (in the un-rented space next to the Branch)

6:30pm – Artist Discussion – topics may include:

                         Setting limits to hold the limitless.      

                         Human systems at work.

                         The fallible element, how it works in art.

                         The steps or ritual.

                         The visible/invisible origin.

                         Finding the spiritual in art through a primitive gesture.

                         A cognitive transformation, instinct to intuition.

Snacks to Share Encouraged

For more info. Contact  Hazel Archer Ginsberg