19 July 2016 – ASTRO-WEATHER -Magnificent Saturn reached its peak just a week ago, when it appeared opposite the Sun in the sky, & our view of the ringed planet remains spectacular. It is on display nearly all night among the background stars of southern Ophiuchus, hanging in the southeastern sky as darkness falls & climbing high in the south by midnight.

After nightfall, Altair shines in the east-southeast. It’s the second-brightest star on the eastern side of the sky, after Vega very high to its upper left.

Look above Altair by a finger-width at arm’s length for little orange Tarazed. A bit more than a fist-width to Altair’s lower left is Delphinus, the Dolphin, leaping leftward below the Milky Way.

Today is: Nikola Tesla Day

138 – Deathday of Emperor Hadrian, Roman emperor from 117 to 138. Hadrian is known for building Hadrian’s Wall, which marked the northern limit of Britannia. He also rebuilt the Pantheon & constructed the Temple of Venus & Roma. An admirer of the Greeks, he is considered to have been a humanist, & he is regarded as one of the Five Good Emperors.

165 – Deathday of Felicitas of Rome. A legend presents her as the mother of the seven martyrs: Alexander, Vitalis, Martialis, Januarius, Felix, Philip, Sylvanus. In Rudolf Steiner’s original Calendar of the Soul we see listed with her today the Fairy Tale The Seven Ravens (Sieben Bruder) by Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm

1212 –London burns to the ground

1509 – Birthday of John Calvin, an influential French theologian & pastor during the Protestant Reformation

1778 – American Revolution: Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain

1832 – U.S. President Andrew Jackson vetoes a bill that would re-charter the Second Bank of the United States

1856 – Birthday of Nikola Tesla, a Serbian American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, & futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system

1871 – Birthday of Marcel Proust, French novelist, critic, & essayist

1921 –‘Bloody Sunday’: 160 people are killed & 161 houses destroyed during rioting & gun battles in Belfast, Northern Ireland

1925 – Scopes Trial: the so-called “Monkey Trial” – a young high school science teacher accused of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act.

1938 – Howard Hughes sets a new record by completing a 91-hour airplane flight around the world

1962 – Telstar, the world’s first communications satellite, is launched into orbit.

1966 – The Chicago Freedom Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., holds a rally at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois. As many as 60,000 people come to hear Dr. King as well as Mahalia Jackson, Stevie Wonder, & Peter, Paul and Mary.

1985 – An Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-154 stalls & crashes near Uchkuduk, Uzbekistan (then part of the Soviet Union), killing all 200 people on board in the USSR’s worst-ever airline disaster

1991 – Boris Yeltsin takes office as the first elected President of Russia.

2005 – Hurricane Dennis slams into the Florida Panhandle, causing billions of dollars in damage

***

~my heart. my mother.

my heart. my Mother.

my heart is

the living heart of earth.

my heart is my becoming.

my heart dreams

in the house of hearts.

my heart is a jug of cool water…

the unblinking eye of night –

red & blue flames shooting

from the corners of my mouth…

beneath the lilies,

amid the stars

all flesh & teeth & hunger

i am rising up

like the stirring of bees…

beat beat beat

i rise up & dance upon the altar

~hag

***

Arild Rosenkrantz

I can’t seem to pull myself in from the overview on this BIOGRAPHY thing, so I must continue with broad strokes:

Yesterday we had a Survey of Life: aspects of body, soul & spirit, cresting around the age 27-35 & what lies beyond…so that got me thinking that there are really 2 halves to our life between birth & death: the descent into incarnation & an ascent toward the spiritual world.

Then I started to think about the original plan of the Elohim, who sacrificed themselves to create the human being – & the idea that when doing ‘biography work’, one of the goals is to see beyond the events of our lives, to reveal the workings of the hierarchies behind them. In Karmic Relationships, VII: Lecture Two, Steiner tells us:

“…Everything is present simultaneously, in a mighty panorama of the whole of life since the birth of the ‘I’; but the several epochs are in a certain respect distinct from each other. We survey our experiences from birth until the change of teeth…when the consciousness has been emptied of all pictorial impressions and we have achieved Inspiration, we behold the living, weaving activity of the Moon sphere in place of the tableau of early childhood from birth until the seventh year. We behold this living, weaving activity…which brings us knowledge of the secrets of the Moon sphere, when the pictures of our own life up to the seventh year are obliterated in the consciousness of Inspiration, and we perceive what now flashes up in their place.

Then, if we observe the tableau of life between the seventh and fourteenth years and again obliterate the pictures in the consciousness of Inspiration, we gaze into the Mercury sphere.

Everything has to do with the being of man, for man is an integral part of the whole Universe. If he learns to know himself as he really is, in the innermost core of his being, he learns to know the whole Universe. And now I would ask you to pay attention to the following. — Deepest respect arises in us for the old, instinctive Initiation Science which gave things that have remained in existence to this day, their true and proper names… Ancient Initiation Science knew by instinct something that is confirmed to-day by statistics, namely, that the illnesses of childhood occur most frequently in the first period of life; it is then that the human being is most prone to illness, and even to death; after puberty this tendency abates, but the healthiest period of all, the period when mortality is at its lowest, is between the ages of seven and fourteen. The wise men of old knew that this is due to the influences of the Mercury sphere…

By looking back into our experiences from the fourteenth to the twenty-first years and obliterating the pictures in the consciousness of Inspiration, we are led to the secrets of the Venus sphere. Here again the wonderful wisdom of ancient Initiation Science comes into evidence. The human being reaches puberty; love is born. When the pictures of this period of life are illumined by Initiation Science, the secrets of the Venus sphere are disclosed.

When the pictures of experiences occurring between the twenty-first and forty-second years of life are eliminated in the consciousness of Inspiration, we are led to the Sun sphere. Through deepened self-knowledge the secrets of the Sun sphere can be experienced in this retrospective contemplation of the events of our life between the twenty-first and forty-second years. To acquire knowledge of the Sun existence our vision must cover a period three times longer than that of the periods connected with the other planetary bodies.

Now if the elaboration of karma has taken place mainly in the Mars sphere, investigation is more difficult. For if a man attains Initiation before the age of 49, it is not possible for him to look back into the period of life which here comes into question, namely, the period between the forty-second and forty-ninth years. He must have passed his forty-ninth year if he is to be able to eliminate the pictures of this particular set of experiences and penetrate the secrets of the Mars sphere.

If Initiation is attained after the age of fifty-six it is possible to look back into the period between the forty-ninth and fifty-sixth years of life, when karma that is connected with the Jupiter sphere takes shape. And now we are at the point where the various sets of events come together in one connected whole.

It is not until the period between the fifty-sixth and sixty-third years that we are able to survey the whole range of experiences and to speak out of our own inner knowledge. For then we can gaze into the profoundly significant secrets of the Saturn sphere. Karmas that were wrought out mainly in the Saturn sphere operate in mysterious ways to bring men together again in the world. But in order to perceive with independent vision and be able to judge them, we must ourselves have reached the age of sixty-three.

When we look up to the Sun, to the planetary system — and the same applies to the rest of the starry heavens for they are connected in a very real way with the being of man — we can witness how human karma takes shape in the Cosmos. The Moon, the planets Venus, Jupiter — verily these heavenly bodies are not as physical astronomy describes them. In their constellations, in their mutual relationships, in their radiance, in their whole existence, they are the builders and shapers of human destinies, they are the cosmic timepiece according to which we live out our karma. As they shine downwards from the heavens their influences have real power.

From this point of view let us think of the human being and his karma. Those who with the help of Anthroposophy evolve a healthy conception of the world as against the unsound views prevailing to-day, will unfold not only quite different concepts and ideas but also quite different feelings and perceptions. For you see, if we really understand the destiny of a man, we also learn to understand the secrets of the world of stars, the secrets of the Cosmos. In times when knowledge was held to be sacred because it issued from the Mysteries, nobody would have written biographies in the way that is customary to-day. Every ancient ‘biography’ contained indications of the influences and secrets of the world of stars.

In human destiny we can perceive, firstly, the working of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai; then of still loftier Sun Beings, Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes; then of the Thrones who are concerned mainly with the elaboration of karma in the Mars sphere; then of the Cherubim who elaborate the karma belonging to the Jupiter sphere; and then of the Seraphim who work together with man at the elaboration of karma in the Saturn sphere — Saturn karma.

In a man’s destiny, in his karma, we behold the working of the higher Hierarchies. This karma, at first, is like a veil, a curtain. If we look behind this veil we gaze at the weaving deeds and influences of Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim. Every human destiny is like script on a sheet of paper. Just imagine that someone looking at the writing on the paper were to say that he can see signs – K – E – I, and so forth, but he is quite unable to combine these letters into words!..Similarly, when we observe the karma of a human being in the ordinary way, we see letters only; but the moment we begin to read this karma we behold the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai and their mutual, interrelated deeds. The destiny of an individual human life becomes the richer, the more we get beyond the thirty-four letters and find in them — a life!

And the picture of a human destiny is enriched beyond measure when earthly ignorance is transformed into knowledge of the Cosmic Alphabet, when we realise that the letters of that script are the signs and tokens of the deeds of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies.

To a man who beholds it, the vista of karma as the shape taken by destiny in life is so overwhelming, so sublime and majestic that simply by understanding how karma is related to the spiritual Cosmos he will unfold quite different qualities of feeling and discernment…Verily, we are citizens not of the Earth alone but of the land of Spirits. The whole existence we have spent between death and a new birth converges in that which, on Earth, is enclosed within our skin. The secrets of worlds are contained in a particular form within this encircling skin.

Human self-knowledge is world-knowledge. And so when friends have given me an opportunity, I have often written down for them the following lines:

If you would know your Self,

Look out into the Cosmic Spaces.

To know the Cosmic Spaces,

Look into your own Self.”

Plenty to chew on for today

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg