“A jubilant breath pervades the prayers of Easter, expressing itself twice, as with inward necessity, in the word “rejoice”…First, the breathing soul-sphere of the whole planet rejoices, that renewed cosmic sphere of sunlit clouds, air and wind into which the earth grows in Spring; then, the inward life of man, touched by the Risen Christ, rejoices too. We recognize the wide span of the soul at Easter: it comprises the outward and the inward world, macrocosm and microcosm.” – excerpt from “The Three Years” by Emil Bock.

Calendar of the Soul (March 27, 2016 – April 02, 2016)
Easter (First Week) SPRING

When out of world-wide spaces
The sun speaks to the human mind,
And gladness from the depths of soul
Becomes, in seeing, one with light,
Then rising from the sheath of self,
Thoughts soar to distances of space
And dimly bind
The human being to the spirit’s life.

English translation by Ruth and Hans Pusch

Wenn aus den Weltenweiten
Die Sonne spricht zum Menschensinn
Und Freude aus den Seelentiefen
Dem Licht sich eint im Schauen,
Dann ziehen aus der Selbstheit Hülle
Gedanken in die Raumesfernen
Und binden dumpf
Des Menschen Wesen an des Geistes Sein.

Easter Festival:
‘A Path to the Dawning’
4pm -6pm, Easter Sunday March 27th
at The Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago

Midwest Eurythmy Group to Perform:
‘Hallelujah’ & the Easter Calendar of the Soul Verse by Rudolf Steiner

Lecture: Encountering the Inner Layers of the Earth as a Christian/Rosicrucian Initiation,
in relation to the Beatitudes and the 9-fold human being. by Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Live Music: Clark Remington – Prelude and Fugue by Bach

Group Eurythmy – Hallelujah

$10 donation goes to the Midwest Eurhythmy Group

A side-dish to Share Encouraged!
(We will have our traditional Lamb Roast!)

For more info. Contact Hazel ReverseRitual@gmail.com

~ ~ ~

Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society,
4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
Check out our Web site!
Chicago, IL (Anthroposophical Society in America)http://www.anthroposophy.org/groups/chicago-il/

In the New Mysteries we follow the path of Rosicrucian/Christian initiation through Holy Week. With every step, from the recognition of the old atavistic Sun on Palm Sunday, through to the meeting of the Saturn-Spirit and The Harrowing of Hell, we sow healing seeds, sprouted in the blood of Christ, that spark the rising of the New Sun of Easter, within ourselves and in the Universe. Each of these steps through the planetary spheres leads to a conquest of a corresponding layer in the interior of the earth. The Beatitudes are the spiritual weapon we must wield to fortify the development of self-determination in the human ego led by Christ, giving us the strength to make the darkness transparent. Like Christ, we must descend to ascend.

Every year we have a chance to recapitulate the original Easter event. We rest on the Sabbath, Saturn-day – In Christo morimur – This is the Mystic-death or temple sleep of the initiate; remembering that In the Garden of Gethsemane – the midpoint of the earth – the epicenter of the cosmos – between the rocky hill of Golgotha, part of the lunar Mount Moriah, and it’s polar opposite the Solar Mount Zion, there was a New Tomb where the body of Christ rested, and yet it was the Oldest Tomb, for it was formerly a primal fissure, a gorge splitting Jerusalem in two, called by some Adam’s Grave –known as the gate to the underworld. The earthquakes of Good Friday and Holy Saturday tore open the original fissure. The veil of the Temple “was rent in twain”. Vistas were opened into the interior of the earth.

“He was lowered into the grave of the earth’, and so it was, that The Christ went into the Earth’s Interior, His blood becoming the medicine for our continued evolution. The darkness of Saturn is lit up from within by the Resurrected Sun. The Easter garden begins to bloom, so that our soul can behold, like the Magdalana before us, The Risen One as the gardener of the New Jerusalem.

In ‘The Birth of a New Agriculture: Koberwitz 1924’ , we learn that the earth underwent a change through the deed of redemption on Golgotha, a transformation of the unruly Mars powers of rusty iron into the silvery light of Mercury. This transforming of iron thru the sacred mystery of the Christ-blood is a determining factor in the transformation of earthly substance, which will later be carried over into the transubstantiation of the earth. The spirit radiates from the heights and yet is also carried to us by the eternal divine world of the depths. ‘May there ascend from the Depths the prayer that is heard in the Heights’. We can send our prayer to the Christ-heart in the earth’s depths, to help overcome and redeem the adversarial powers that hold sway in the nine layers of the earth’s interior. The agricultural course was a stepping stone to this ultimate aim.

Spiritual science tells us that when the blood flowed into the earth from the cross on Golgotha, a new Sun-globe was born in the interior of the earth. This golden earth-center is the legendary land of Shambhalla, hidden away, yet waiting to be re-discovered by the seeking, Christ-guided human soul.

The Tomb becomes the altar, a sacred place to commune with the gods – with the souls of the departed as our intermediaries. The tomb becomes the Round table, and the Parsifal question leads us to find Christ in the etheric.

Also working with us from the time of the Vernal Equinox is the Archangel Raphael, who holds the staff of Mercury, offering us the healing power of the Caduceus through the grace of the living Christ, who stands as the middle pillar within us all.

Before the mystery of Golgotha, the task of evolution was that the cosmos would become human, after this turning point, the human becomes cosmos –The New Sun -The imperishable resurrection-body uniting with the Cosmic- Sophia.

We now have the opportunity to stand as Michaelic warriors holding the light, sending our shining heart-thinking into the heights and the depths. Remembering all the while what was written on the urn that holds the ashes of Rudolf Steiner: “To create centres of peace & love in which the Christ can resurrect.”

Blessings dear friends on this Holy Saturday 2016

~hag

Easter Festival: ‘A Path to the Dawning’
4pm -6pm, Easter Sunday March 27th
at The Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago

Midwest Eurythmy Group to Perform:
‘Hallelujah’ & the Easter Calendar of the Soul Verse by Rudolf Steiner

Lecture: Encountering the Inner Layers of the Earth as a Christian/Rosicrucian Initiation,
in relation to the Beatitudes and the 9-fold human being. by Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Live Music: Clark Remington – Prelude and Fugue by Bach

Group Eurythmy – Hallelujah

$10 donation goes to the Midwest Eurhythmy Group
A side-dish to Share Encouraged! (We will have our traditional Lamb Roast!)

For more info. Contact Hazel ReverseRitual@gmail.com

<<When between midnight and sunrise the soldiers lay hands upon Him
Whom Judas has kissed, Jesus does not oppose them. Rather, he opposes Peter
who wants to fight for Him. The fight which was waged on the human level
on the previous days is now carried on in a higher sphere, and so takes on
still more powerful dimensions. He fights against the Luciferic powers,
the glittering beings of deceptive light, who want to estrange man from the earth,
and likewise against the Ahrimanic powers who want to harden and fetter man to death matter. In humanity’s evolution up to the “turning-point of time”, death which had
formerly been a friend of man had taken on more and more the features of Ahriman.
During earthly life it binds him to the world of matter; it makes all sorts of promises
of earthly fulfillment, which are no longer kept after death. After death we have only
as much spiritual command over matter as we have gained upon Earth.

In the quiet grove of the Mount of Olives, where He has so often been with His disciples
for intimate teaching, He must now withstand the most dangerous attack of the enemy
in utmost loneliness. The consciousness of the disciples is absorbed in the twilight of sleep
in Gethsemane, out of which Peter will deny Christ.

One could not misunderstand the Passion of Christ by thinking that Jesus prayed
to be spared from death. Not fear of death, but death itself assails Him.
The Destroying Angel wants to possess Him. The secret of the conflict in Gethsemane
lies in the fact that death wants to outwit Jesus. It wants to wrest Him away too soon,
before He has ended His work and filled the last vestige of the earthly vessel with His spirit.

For three years the Fire of divine Ego-hood has burned in the body and soul of Jesus.
The human vessel – from within outwards – has already been consumed almost to ashes. What still has to be suffered and completed demands so much strength from the earthly sheaths that there is a real danger of premature death. Ahriman lies in wait and hopes to
make use of this moment.But Christ is victorious and death is repulsed.
It is an echo of this fight when He speaks on the Cross the words that seem to betray a weakness: “I thirst”. It is not His will to pass into the spiritual world simply through dying.
It is His will to remain united with the Earth when He goes through death.
He wrestles to enter still more deeply into the earthly world of matter which He bears in Himself through His physical body. There is still a last remnant to be ensouled.

On the morning of Good Friday Christ confronts the whole of humanity,
as represented by the three figures of Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod.

When the sun is darkened during the sultry midday hours of Good Friday,
it is as though the demon of the sun were straining to the utmost against
the God of the sun. And when the earth is shaken by the earthquake,
all the demons of the earth seem to storm forward to help the satanic death-power
to victory. However, death can strip nothing from the sovereignty of Christ’s spirit,
from His authority over all earth existence.

Christ, in dying, goes directly to the Earth. The blood streams from His wounds;
His soul goes with it into the body of the Earth. Later the Earth opens in an earthquake
and takes into itself the body of Christ. The Earth receives the body and the blood of Christ, the great Communion, and so the medicine for the spiritualizing of all material existence is incorporated into Earth existence – “The medicine that makes us whole”.>>
~excerpt from “The Three Years” by Emil Bock

Easter-Tide Study throughout Holy Week
(Chapter 10 of “The Three Years” by Emil Bock)
at The Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago

Good Friday & Holy Saturday March 25-26, 7pm-9pm

Including Eurythmy – The 7-pointed Star
(Steiner called it the Heptagram of the Lamb)

If you would like a copy of the text contact Hazel ReverseRitual@gmail.com

~ ~ ~

Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society,
4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618
Check out our Web site!
Chicago, IL (Anthroposophical Society in America)