June 2^nd, 2016

455 – Sack of Rome: Vandals enter Rome, and plunder the city for two weeks

1098 – First Crusade: The first Siege of Antioch ends as Crusader forces take the city.

1692 – Bridget Bishop is the first person to go to trial in the Salem witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Found guilty, she is hanged on June 10.

1743 – Birthday of Alessandro Cagliostro, Italian occultist and explorer. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe relates in his Italian Journey, that during the trial of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace*, Cagliostro said that he had been born of noble birth but abandoned as an orphan upon the island of Malta. He claimed to have traveled as a child to Medina, Mecca, & Cairo, & was then admitted to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, where he studied alchemy, the Kabbalah, & magic. (*The Affair of the Diamond Necklace – an incident in 1781 at the court of Louis XVI of France involving his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette. The reputation of the Queen, which was already tarnished by gossip, was ruined by the implication that she had participated in a crime to defraud the crown jewelers of the cost of a very expensive diamond necklace. The Affair was historically significant as one of the events that led to the French populace’s disillusionment with the monarchy, which, among other causes, eventually culminated in the French Revolution)

1793 – French Revolution: François Hanriot, leader of the Parisian National Guard, arrests 22 Girondists selected by Jean-Paul Marat, setting the stage for the Reign of Terror.

1835 – P. T. Barnum and his circus start their first tour of the United States

1882 – Deathday of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian general and politician. “That’s not a man. One day the Devil fell in love with a holy, Garibaldi was born after nine months”. — A dying soldier, after a battle against Garibaldi, in the comic story “Mille contro centomila”. I believe Steiner speaks about him in his Karmic Relationships lectures.

1922 – Start of the East-West Congress in Vienna, opened by Polzer-Hoditz. It was Rudolf Steiner’s last public lecture on Three-folding.

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Odiln Redon

~The striped pebble is warm in my palm

I raise it up to honor the salamanders raying slices thru the sky –

Blazing thru magnolias toward the valley

Where the fire begins again…

There I stand poised in the fragrance of purple amaranth

Throwing stars & wishing on stones

I am a flower that never dies…

~hag

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In thinking about: “The Working of the Spirit” by Michael Burton & Marke Levene. Part 8  (program for the Chicago reading)  

Having passed thru the “Trial by Fire” in scene 10, next we meet the “Trial by water” & (spoiler alert!!!) the death of the spiritual teacher Benedictus. There is a definite correlation to the untimely passing of Rudolf Steiner that is implied here. We see into the souls of those who were in his inner circle. Hilary takes it very hard, blaming himself. The Guardian, who bares the countenance of Benedictus, seeks to comfort him: “Your better selves shall sleep at times. But I do not forget. And, through my power, you’ll pick yourself out of the dust when you have failed and turn again to the deep and inward longing of your heart.” Each of them feels his presence as a force weaving the karma between them.

Then with a rush, the outer circle arrives, manic in the push of business, the tasks of the factory, an opening for their personal agendas. Ferdinand Reinecke, (his name means fox) who we have seen throughout as a conniving opportunist, has had a kind of mystical experience involving the inner workings of the Strader machine, right at the time of Benedictus’ passing, bringing a leap in his spiritual growth. And yet Ahriman still has a hold of him, & we see a battle, with the Guardian lending support to all.

Frederick Trautman wants to seize this opportunity to give his group greater power, the inner group ponders this.

Tomorrow we meet the “Trail by Air”.

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

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June 1^st 2916

World Children’s Day

1812 – War of 1812: U.S. President James Madison asks the Congress to declare war on the United Kingdom

1831 – James Clark Ross becomes the first European at the North Magnetic Pole

1967 – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles is released

1968 – Deathday of Helen Keller

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~I embrace the hair on your resting head

I am not here

To raise order out of chaos or bind darkness with the light

I am here

To change, to do the things left undone –

Words unsaid will be pronounced

Broadcast – From my clapping hands

Like seeds tossed into the clefting shadow…

My limbs, a wild disco ball

Spinning with stars, are awake & willing.

~hag

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In thinking about: “The Working of the Spirit” by Michael Burton & Marke Levene. Part 7  (program for the Chicago reading)  

“…In our present world culture, the problems that we encounter in the economic sphere result from a shortfall of ethical and moral values. Great technological and scientific progress has taken place, but human beings have not been able to keep up. Many men and women today show signs of having lost contact with themselves and one another; they feel incomplete and are alienated from their true spiritual natures. We have focused on technological process and forgotten that the root of all our problems is human greed. No amount of proselytizing will change this; the situation will be resolved only when mainstream ideas are not only directed towards materialistic concerns but are also driven by spiritual desires. Genuine spirituality, true to the values of the earth, gives insights into the spiritual cosmos as well as into physical matters and enables us to find our place between earth’s conflicts and spiritual reconciliation.

All of this is inferred in Burton’s imaginative drama. It is a response to the situation in which we find ourselves today through the many different events that have taken place during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Burton’s play reminds us of the deep hope we carry within us that, after evil has prevailed, the driving forces of anti-evolution, personified in these plays under the name Ahriman, can be redeemed through love.

I recommend to readers and to those who will participate at performances that they keep studying Burton’s drama. There is much more content within it than I can express in this foreword”. ~Karl Kaltenbach, OAM, Canberra April 2016.

Karl Kaltenbach was born in Germany and immigrated to Australia. In 1969 he founded Warrah, a cultural economic (not for profit) enterprise for curative education for children and adults near Sydney. In 1982 he received the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) and, in 1993, was awarded a Honoris Causa Doctorate from the Vatican College for his writing on social issues for people with special needs. From 1983 to 2000 he was General Secretary of the Australian Anthroposophical Society and the coordinator of a group which, if it can work in the way that he imagines it, could be called an academy for spiritual science in Australia. Today he is an independent essayist and writes on spiritual science and contemporary art.

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Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg