Dear friends – I have been carrying a powerful overlay of the Holy Nights deeply in my soul, & in the ongoing alchemical digestion, so many thoughts & insights continue to arise which I have started to share in these prior essays: Festival of Offering, Come unity, Vidar Speaks, & there is so much more, which realistically I cannot relay before I leave tomorrow for the West Coast. But I do want to try & put a few words to the experience we had at Camphill Beaver Run on NYE 2023, 100 years after the burning of the 1st Goetheanum.
We entered Rainbow Hall in the evening with the stage converted to give us a background bathed in deep primary blue, edged with the red velvet curtains, to receive: FIRE IN THE TEMPLE – The True Story of the Death of Rudolf Steiner, An Open-Secret Drama in Two Parts, written by Glen Williamson, directed by Laurie Portocarrero. They both read multiple roles, with the addition of eurythmists Zachary Dolphin as the Archangel Michael, & Sea-Anna Vasilas who gives a moving eurythmy performance & also plays ‘Sam’ a fictional amalgamation of several important anthroposophists.
We are propelled back to the years 1923, 1924 & early 1925 – We met in Dornach, & go all over Europe – living also into flashbacks from ancient times, where we get glimpses into various karmic connections thru earlier incarnations, & see how the individualities who become part of the original Vorstand interact.
Glen has been working on this script since 2017. What is most intriguing to me is that most of the dialogue comes from their own words, sourced from lectures, letters, memoirs & personal notebooks.
Everyone at the conference kept saying – ‘the play that’s not a play’ – because we all felt it to be so relevant – the ‘characters’ are US now!…
The 1st thing we meet is a ‘Dark Lodge of a Secret Brotherhood’ working with ‘Green Demons’, who thruout the play seek to stop the impulses brought forth from the spiritual world thru Rudolf Steiner, who thru Zachary’s powerful eurythmy we see working closely with the Archangel Michael.
Then we are immediately propelled to the dramatic scene of the burning.
The interaction between these historic personalities shows the various karmic streams playing out. We as the audience can relate, feeling acutely the joys & sorrows of how hard it is to be in relationship. I found myself wishing that they could just love & accept each other, as Dr. Steiner did. The play clearly shows how he appreciated every one of them for who they were, & what they had to give; each playing an important role in the whole, each in their own way serving.
We are pulled into love & compassion thru the insights gleaned from their various relationships; from pet names, to open hostilities & misunderstandings.
The flow between Glen & Laurie is a potent dance. It is breathtaking to follow Laurie as she flawlessly builds & embodies the essence of the various personae for us, subtle yet highly refined & defined – And then she just lets that character drop away – moving graciously into the next soul essence – her whole demeanor transforming before our eyes – until we believe that Marie Steiner or Ita Wegman stand before us.
Sea-Anna brings the light & hope of her combined character alive with her expressive being. Her eurythmy is heart-throbbing & compelling. Zachary IS Michael – his articulate commanding presence opens us to the spiritual world, allowing us to perceive & contemplate the quintessence of this mighty Being.
Thru them we see the characters, whose lives we feel intertwined with, struggle to remember their past lives together; struggle to know when to speak about such things & when not to, & the consequences of not asking the Parzival question in time. We see how Steiner left everyone free to meet their karma. And we often lament that if they could have worked harder on their moral inner development, & if they had been able to truly take up the indications that Steiner gave them, then so much would have been different. And the thing is folks, the play does not make us feel that this is outside ourselves. It continues to apply to us today!
We feel Steiner’s burden, his humor & magnanimity; & his great responsibility as an initiate. We experience Marie Steiner’s pain & see her glory. We take on Ita Wegman’s mission. And even if sometimes we feel a onesided sympathy or antipathy rise up, or a keen sense of frustration, (this gives us great insight into ourselves) we can’t help being warmed by, & want to rout for, all the individualities that were at the center of the Anthroposophical impulse with Rudolf Steiner. Sharing their gifts, we revel in their deeds. And our own conscience is pricked by their all too humanness.
We stand on a druid hill, we go to ancient Greece, & into the middle ages – We knee at the death beds of Edith Mayon & our beloved teacher Rudolf Steiner.
“Our houses may be shattered into dust.
But in the Temple of our body, pain
may grow into a light of soul,
and through the dust and ashes we will bear
a godly flame within our human hearts.” ~Rudolf Steiner
Can we learn from the triumphs, & mistakes, of our forebearers, as we move into the Centennial of the Christmas Conference with its refounding thru Rudolf Steiner? This play prods us awake & prompts us to be active, vigilant, & practical, asking: What is next for us, now, & for the next 100 years?
~hag
The staged reading is beyond gripping – The full cast production with music, sets, lighting/sound & costumes will be epic!
To support a full-scale production of this important work donate here
Dear friends – I will be offline until the Cross-quarter 1 February 2023 – Come play with me in Northern Cali:
Candlemas – a Cross-Quarter Festival Heralding Spring – with Willow Summer & Hazel Archer-Ginsberg
Wednesday 25 January 2023 – Program – 3 pm – Potluck – 5 pm, Please Bring Food & Drink to Share
Storytelling: The Alchemy of Celtic Triple Goddess Brigid
The Year of the Water Rabbit – Tu B’Shvat – Beeswax Crafting – Singing
Rudolf Steiner’s Seed Meditation – from ‘How to Know Higher Worlds’
‘Charm the Plow’ – Bless & Consecrate the Farm tools
Three Springs Community Farm 15300 Bodega Hwy, Bodega, CA 94922
Contact Willow for more info.
Velsum Voices Presents: ‘New Nightingale, New Rose’
A Benefit Concert to support Nancy Jewel Poer and the community events at White Feather Ranch
Saturday, 28 January 2023, at 2 pm PT
In the Peace Garden at White Feather Ranch, Placerville, CA
All Ages – Love Donation – Contribute what you will
Come join us for Velsum’s West Coast Debut!
Dress in warm clothes for a hearty heart-filled afternoon of music and celebration. We will have an outdoor fire. If it is too chilly we can meet in the Ranch House. Pack your own picnic lunch or dinner.
Can’t make the concert? You can still Donate to Nancy’s web site
*RSVP to receive directions to White Feather Ranch hazel@reverseritual.com
‘Velsum‘ is a musical initiative formed through Lucien Dante Lazar and Ultra-Violet Archer. The songs are inspired to develop our human capacity for Love and Logic. Velsum is a celebration of harmony, rhythm, prayer, and the human voice. Each song is permeated with a sincere interest in the other, the self, the world, and the cosmos. ‘”Velsum’s music is a product of listening.” We hope that by listening to these songs, you feel heard. ~Velsum
Lucien and Ultra met as children at the Chicago Waldorf School, and became friends and collaborators as young adults. They now write, record and perform original music through the initiative Velsum. They debuted the show ‘New Nightingale, New Rose’ last winter at Angelic Organics Farm, and have performed it throughout the Midwest. Through weaving harmonies, poetic recitations, and movement, New Nightingale, New Rose invites the audience on a quest for love and wisdom. A joyful experience awaits young and old!
Here is a short video clip of Velsum, and here you can find their link to all links! https://linktr.ee/velsum
~Velsum: Ancient Futurism~ Lucien Dante Lazar and Ultra-Violet Archer
Here is a short video clip of Velsum find them on Instagram, Bandcamp, apple music, soundcloud, spotify, youtube
Ultra-Violet Archer – (b. Chicago, IL, 1999) is a songwriter and music producer, exploring music as a tool for healing and storytelling. After studying at Oberlin College & Conservatory and spending a year in Järna, Sweden, at the International Youth Initiative Program, she currently studies music at Columbia College Chicago. She strives to make music that invites people to honor the parts of themselves they feel but can’t yet put into words. https://linktr.ee/UltraVioletArcher
Lucien Dante Lazar (b. Chicago, IL, 1994) is an interdisciplinary artist whose praxis is founded in the intersections of art, science, and spirituality. He received his BA from Bard College (2016), his MFA from California College of the Arts (2020), and is currently working on his PhD in the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness program at California Institute of Integral Studies. His dissertation will concern the pedagogy of spiritual development through the diversity of the arts.
The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg
This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it. Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll
Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance
When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.
Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.
This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.
Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.
Hi Hazel,
I realize that my screed might not have been timely, or even appropriate for what you are doing right now. Yet, a voice told me to send it anyway. I asked a question at the end, and it was designed to make a point. Here was the question:
“You do remember what Christ told Peter in the Gospel of Luke, don’t you? It was at the Last Supper”. He said something that could prove to be quite relevant within your own very circumstances in these following days:
28 “You are those who have stood by Me in My trials; 29 and just as My Father has granted Me a kingdom, I grant you 30 that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
31 “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; 32 but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” 33 But he said to Him, “Lord, with You I am ready to go both to prison and to death!” 34 And He said, “I say to you, Peter, the rooster will not crow today until you have denied three times that you know Me.” Luke 22
This should help clear up my concerns about you, but it is very veiled. Nonetheless, I am still your biggest fan 🙂
Hi Hazel,
To me, this all seems like a case of cultic ceremonialism, and carried to the max. I doubt very much that Rudolf Steiner would appreciate it. Rather, he would be more inclined to hear of instances where each individual, suffering the so-called “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”, due to the burden of Lucifer and Ahriman, simply apply their own personal light to the overall sum of light. This is the Kwon, and for example, was the motive for Tolstoy going out on the street one day and giving all his money away. He had suffered the question, “what then must we do”, and found a preliminary solution with this gesture. You know that Steiner was all for picking up the pieces that very day, and moving on with his agenda, which was giving the final lectures in a course that he had interrupted for Christmas renderings on Spiritual Communion, ref. GA 219. So, he began that very day of January 1, 1923, with the continuation of the course, Origins of Natural Science, as if nothing had happened that could phase him. Of course, it was a lesson to be seen and felt amongst the members, and their devastation.
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA326/English/AP1985/OrNaSc_index.html
So, I am a big fan of your adventures in the science of the spirit, and yet, we all live in a world that is coming apart at the seams, it seems. Much more is taking place than advocating the continuance of an anthroposophical community. The bigger picture is one of unflinching awareness that Sorath has the grip on the world, and has raised Lucifer and Ahriman to do the work that they were glad to leave behind with the homage of Christ. Steiner’s “Representative of Man” sculpture conveys this in remarkable detail. Sorath resurrects it in grotesque detail, wherein Lucifer and Ahriman weep as they do what they are forced to do at the behest of Sorath.
This is the world we live in at this very moment, and Christ as the Light of the World is far more meaningful than enhancing the ceremonial order of a small and seemingly consecrated vortex, even if it is near Philadelphia. The present world of some 8 billion citizens, all direct sources of light, could be reduced to a mere fraction, say 144,000, according to what the Sixth Seal depicts in the Book of Revelation. This is quite a reduction, and means the future is one that starts now. Thus, awareness is far more global than merely meeting these so-called “consecrated vortexes”, as much as they do represent a start. You see, you gotta start somewhere. Hazel, I will contemplate you in these next few days. You do remember what Christ told Peter in the Gospel of Luke, don’t you? It was at the Last Supper.