Monthly Archives: September 2016

Look at the Words in your Heart

September 20, 2016Autumn, Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Lecture, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

20 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: Although Mercury passed between the Sun & Earth just eight days ago, the planet named for the fleet-footed messenger god in Roman mythology lives up to its reputation this week as it climbs into view before sunrise. You can find the innermost planet above the eastern horizon 30 minutes before sunup. Mercury climbs higher & brightens rapidly as it heads toward greatest elongation next week, when it appears a half-hour before sunrise

Anne North

This is the time of year when, during the evening, the dim Little Dipper pours into the bowl of the Big Dipper way down below. The Big Dipper will pour it back in the evenings of spring

***

Looking at the past to see the present, co-creating the future:

“History, historical life, will only be seen in the right light when a true consciousness of the connection of the so-called living with the so-called dead can be developed” – The Living and the Dead by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, 5th February, 1918

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

622 – Muhammad & Abu Bakr arrived in Medina

1378 – Cardinal Robert of Geneva, called by some the “Butcher of Cesena“, is elected as Pope Clement VII, beginning the Papal schism. He was the 1^st antipope residing in Avignon, France

1498 – The Nankai earthquake generates a tsunami that washes away the building housing the statue of the Great Buddha at Kōtoku-in in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan. Over 10,000 die

1519 – Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with 270 men on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe

1737 – The Walking Purchase– between the Penn family, the proprietors of Pennsylvania, & the Lenape Tribe (also known as the Delaware). This document may have been an unsigned, unratified treaty, or even an outright forgery (Encyclopædia Britannica refers to it as a “land swindle”. The Penns’ agents began selling land, an area of 1,200,000 acres, in the Lehigh Valley to colonists while the Lenape still inhabited the area

1893 – Charles Duryea road-tests the first American-made gasoline-powered automobile

1906 – Founding of the Paracelsus Branch, Basel Switzerland

1913 – The laying of the Foundation Stone of the 1^st Goetheanum

1913 – Founding of the Moscow Branch of the Anthroposophical Society

1933 – Deathday of Annie Besant. In 1890 Besant met Helena Blavatsky. She became a member of the Theosophical Society & a prominent lecturer. She established the first overseas Lodge of the International Order of Co-Freemasonry, Le Droit Humain. Over the next few years she established lodges in many parts of the British Empire. In 1907 she became president of the Theosophical Society, whose international headquarters were in Adyar, Madras. She also became involved in politics in India, joining the Indian National Congress. When World War I broke out in 1914, she helped launch the Home Rule League to campaign for democracy in India. This led to her election as president of the India National Congress. In the late 1920s, Besant travelled to the United States with her protégé & adopted son Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom she claimed was the new Messiah & incarnation of Buddha. Krishnamurti rejected these claims in 1929. She is thought to be the reincarnation of Giordano Bruno

1941 – Holocaust 403 Jews (128 men, 176 women & 99 children) were murdered by Einsatzkommando 3 in Nemencing, Latvia.

1942 – Holocaust in Letychiv, Ukraine. In the course of two days the German SS murders at least 3,000 Jews

1973 – Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes tennis match at the Houston Astrodome

***

~The shining ones laughed

Slapping each other’s backs

“Have you forgotten so soon

What you have learned in the lotus pool?

Try not thinking so much.

Look at the words in your heart.”

I looked & I saw…

~hag

***

Today I begin a series on Michaelmas. This year I have been working with

MICHAELMAS AND THE SOUL-FORCES OF MAN By RUDOLF STEINER

Summary by Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Lecture 1. How can humanity, the earth citizen, become once more a citizen of the cosmos? The expansion of life’s horizon into cosmic reaches brings the human being into the picture of Michael’s Conflict with the Dragon.

The Dragon is not found in the sense world. Where is he? The dragon lives within the human being. “…the outer cosmic conflict of Michael and the Dragon was transferred to the inner human being, because only in human nature could the Dragon now find his sphere of action.”

Because of that Michael now works with us to fight the dragon within human nature.

Steiner gives this picture of the dragon writhing around the animalistic part of humanity, even coiling around the heart; but then — behind us, at the back of the head — the outer cosmic figure of Michael, towering, radiant, retaining his cosmic nature but reflecting it in the higher human nature, so that our etheric body reflects etherically the cosmic figure of Michael. Then there would be visible in the human head — but working down into the heart — the power of Michael, crushing the Dragon and causing blood to flow down from the heart to the limbs.” So we can put our will into action

“…. In the intellect we are isolated from the world, because everyone has their own head, and in that head, their own thoughts. But In our Gemüt we cannot do that, the Gemüt is not dependent upon the head, but on the rhythmic system, bringing us back to where we belong, as a being in the cosmos.”

The Gemüt, as meaning something like: ‘the mind warmed by a loving heart and stimulated by the soul’s imaginative power’.

“…So with our Gemüt we can say: The power of the Dragon is working within me, I might not see it — but I can feel it as a force that wants to drag me down below myself. But in the spirit I see the luminous Angel whose cosmic task has always been the vanquishing of the Dragon. I concentrate my Gemüt upon this glowing figure, I let its light stream into my Gemüt, so that my illumined and warmed Gemüt will bear within it the strength of Michael. And out of a free resolution I will be able, through my alliance with Michael, to conquer the Dragon’s might in my own lower nature.”

“…this activated Gemüt enters into a living relationship with the whole cosmos the moment it indeed comes to life.

Life will not have a true soul content until we can develop cosmic impulses in our Gemüt.”

Tomorrow I will bring my summary of lecture 2

Xox ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

PS. I have fixed the problem with the comments. It is now functioning, so please feel free to continue to co-create the conversation

***

Current Festival & Program Events

Becoming Mystic Activists

September 19, 2016Insight, Poetry, Remembering, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

19 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: Once Venus sets during evening twilight, Mars becomes the brightest point of light in the sky. The Red Planet shines high in the west-southwest in early evening. Mars lies among the background stars of southeastern Ophiuchus.

Arcturus shines in the west these evenings as twilight fades out. Equally-bright Capella is rising in the north-northeast.

***

“What is to be the starting force & impulse for events in social & ethical life must come out of the spiritual world.” Rudolf Steiner, New Spiritual Impulses in History” Dornach 16 December, 1917

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

The Feast of San Gennaro

The Feast of Our Lady of La Salette*

634 – Siege of Damascus: The Rashidun Arabs under Khalid ibn al-Walid capture Damascus from the Byzantine Empire

1692 –The only death by peine forte et dure in American history was Giles Corey, who was (“pressed to death”) during the Salem witch trials, after he refused to enter a plea in the judicial proceeding. According to legend, his last words as he was being crushed were “More weight”, even though he was thought to be dead as the weight was applied

*1846 – Two French shepherd children, Mélanie Calvat & Maximin Giraud, experience a Marian apparition on a mountaintop near La Salette, France, now known as Our Lady of La Salette. They returned from the mountain where they had been minding cows & reported seeing “a beautiful lady” on Mount Sous-Les Baisses, weeping bitterly. They described her as sitting with her elbows resting on her knees & her face buried in her hands. She was clothed in a white robe studded with pearls; & a gold colored apron; white shoes & roses about her feet & high head-dress. She wore a crucifix suspended by a necklace from her neck.

According to their account, she continued to weep even as she spoke to them, first in French, then in their own dialect. After giving a secret to each child, the apparition walked into a hill & vanished. The following day the children’s account of the apparition was put into writing & signed by the visionaries & those who had heard the story.

According to the children’s account, the Virgin invited people to respect the repose of the seventh day, & the name of God. She sorrowfully threatened punishment, in particular a scarcity of potatoes, which would rot. The context of these punishments places the warning just prior to the winter of 1846–1847, which was in Europe, & especially in Ireland & in France, a period of famine in the months which followed the apparition. This was one of the factors of the apparition’s popular appeal

1864 – American Civil War: Third Battle of Winchester: Union troops under General Philip Sheridan defeat a Confederate force commanded by General Jubal Early. With over 50,000 troops engaged it was the largest battle fought in the Shenandoah Valley & was not only militarily decisive in that region of Virginia but also played a role in securing Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1864

1881 – U.S. President James A. Garfield dies of wounds suffered in a July 2 shooting. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker, at the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station in Washington. Among those at the station was Robert Todd Lincoln, who sixteen years before had watched his father die from an assassin’s bullet. Vice President Chester A. Arthur becomes President upon Garfield’s death

1893 – Women’s suffrage: In New Zealand, the Electoral Act of 1893 is consented to by the governor giving all women in New Zealand the right to vote

1812 – Deathday of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the banking dynasty

1940 – Witold Pilecki is voluntarily captured and sent to Auschwitz to smuggle out information and start a resistance

1946 – The Council of Europe is founded following a speech by Winston Churchill at the University of Zurich, calling for a “United States of Europe”

1952 – The US bars Charlie Chaplin from re-entering the country after a trip to England

1957 – First American underground nuclear bomb test (part of Operation Plumbbob)

1971 – Deathday of Lory Maier-Smith, the 1^st Eurythmist

1976 – Turkish Airlines Flight 452 hits the Taurus Mountains, killing all 154 passengers & crew

1976 – Two Imperial Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom II jets fly out to investigate a UFO when both independently lose instrumentation & communications as they approach, only to have them restored upon withdrawal

1985 – A Violent. 8.0m earthquake hits Greater Mexico City area, killing at least 5,000 people, & destroys about 400 buildings

1989 – A terrorist bomb explodes UTA Flight 772 in mid-air above the Tùnùrù Desert, Niger, killing 171

***

My POD (Poem Of the Day)

I came into being thru sheer will alone…

I dance like spitting spirals of evolving DNA…

A frenetic bird-heart full of secrets…

I grow as I seek & teach & learn…

I change as change does…in all ways…

My mind is a heart on fire…

My soul an eternal fountain-flame…

I rise like incense into this moment’s air prayer

Enclosed in a spiked shower of nova stars…

I am what I have made…

I am the seed of every Dark Goddess…

As magic as the night…As hard as light…

I am…

Your last 3 exhales distilled into the breath of now…

4 ecstatic screams from the edge of the elements…

The phoenix brooding on a potent pyre…

I am…The hag

Reclaiming the Healing Ways

Of the Wise Witch-Crone

***

Sophie Takata

We are moving ever closer into the eye of the storm, that will decide the future of humanity & the planet. It is crucial for us to know, as the crisis deepens, that what will look & feel like destruction, can be an opportunity to strip away delusion.

The secret of this storm is that it is a birthing – & it is going to demand everything of us. Will we purify our hearts & galvanize our wills to ensure that the new Divine Humanity can be born?

Greed is exploding, Nature is bleeding. Weapons of mass destruction are proliferating & religions are retreating into fundamentalism. The rich 1 per cent are locking the world into a materialism that leaves the rest of the world starving. The corporate media is feeding us sleep inducing trivialities, when what we need to is to be woken up to the spirit behind reality. How am I living? What am I risking at this time of unprecedented crisis?

Can I awaken during this dark night of the species, & stand in uprightness? This ongoing crisis is overloading, yet, if we can stand, we can see, that it is offering humanity these intensities to expand & shatter the hard heart, to open the way, to re-write his-story, by opening the mind in a brainstorming that can co-create a world of love & justice.

We need to become mystic activists – Mystics must get active & activists must become mystic. We must learn to act from a divine peace, that will feed us divine wisdom – To act from a loving, forgiving a heart.

When we learn how to ask, we will receive.

Then this world can become the living kingdom of a Divine Humanity.

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Ideas are for Anthroposophy-Vessels, formed out of love

September 18, 2016Insight, Lecture, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul~hag

18 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: About a half hour after sunset, you shouldn’t have much trouble spotting Venus very low in the west-southwest through the twilight, if you have a clear view down that low. But can you see twinkly little Spica there beneath Venus, perhaps as twilight fades further?

Sandro Botticelli

The Moon reaches perigee, the closest point in its orbit around Earth, at exactly noon CDT. It is then 224,872 miles from us.

Stones to Bread: Mars conjuncts the star Lesath in Scorpio’s stinger, & Venus conjuncts the star Spica, the sheaf of wheat of the Virgin.

***

Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction. ~ Ray Bradbury

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Dierec Bouts the Older

900- Feast Day of Saint Richardis, was the Holy Roman Empress, born in Alsace. She married Charles the Fat & was crowned with him in Rome by Pope John VIII The marriage was childless.

Charles’ reign was marked by internal and external strife, caused primarily by the constant plundering of Norman raiders on the northern French coast. By 887, Charles appears to have succumbed to fits of madness. During this crisis, Richardis attempted to rule in her husband’s stead, but was unsuccessful. In an effort to bring down the over-powerful and hated Liutward, Charles’ archchancellor, he & Richardis were accused by Charles of adultery. Charles asserted that their marriage was unconsummated & demanded a divorce.

In a bid to assure him of her innocence, she finally assented to an ordeal by fire. Barefoot, & wearing a shirt covered in wax, the flames nevertheless refused to touch her. Disheartened by her husband’s continued mistrust, Richardis left the imperial palace & wandered into the forest. There she was visited by an angel, who ordered her to found a convent in a certain spot, which a bear would indicate to her. In Val d’Eleon, at the banks of the river, she saw a bear scratching in the dirt. There she built the abbey of Andlau.

An alternative legend recounts that Richardis found the mother bear grieving over her dead cub in the forest. When Richardis held the cub, it returned to life. After the working of this miracle, both mother & cub remained devoted to the saint for the rest of their lives.

1793 – The first cornerstone of the Capitol building is laid by George Washington

1812 – The 1812 Fire of Moscow dies down after destroying more than three-quarters of the city. Napoleon returns from the Petrovsky Palace to the Moscow Kremlin, spared from the fire.

1850 – The Fugitive Slave Act passed by the United States Congress as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests & Northern Free-Soilers. It required that all escaped slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters & that officials & citizens of free states had to cooperate in this law. Abolitionists nicknamed it the “Bloodhound Law” for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves

1851 – First publication of The New-York Daily Times, which later becomes The New York Times

1873 – Panic of 1873: The U.S. bank Jay Cooke & Company declares bankruptcy, triggering a series of bank failures.

1882 – The Pacific Stock Exchange opens.

1895 – Booker T. Washington delivers the “Atlanta compromise” address. The agreement was that Southern blacks would work &submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic education & due process in law. Blacks would not agitate for equality, integration, or justice, & Northern whites would fund black educational charities

1906 – A typhoon with tsunami kills an estimated 10,000 people in Hong Kong

William-Adolphe Bouguereau

1909 – 1^st mention by Rudolf Steiner of the two Jesus Children. GA 114

1910 – In Amsterdam, 25,000 demonstrate for general suffrage

1916 – 1^st lecture by Rudolf Steiner on the Mexican Mysteries

1919 – The Netherlands gives women the right to vote

1927 – The Columbia Broadcasting System goes on the air

1936 – Deathday of Konrad Burdach,

1939 – The Nazi propaganda broadcaster known as Lord Haw-Haw begins transmitting.

1940 – The British liner SS City of Benares is sunk by German submarine U-48; those killed include 77 child refugees

1943 – World War II: The Jews of Minsk are massacred at Sobibór

1944 – World War II: The British submarine HMS Tradewind torpedoes Jun’yō Maru, 5,600 killed

1947 – The National Security Council & the Central Intelligence Agency are established in the United States under the National Security Act

1960 – Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations

1962 – Deathday of Therese Neumann, mystic, stigmatic

1988 – End of pro-democracy uprisings in Myanmar after a bloody military coup. Thousands, mostly monks & civilians (primarily students), are killed

2001 – First mailing of anthrax letters from Trenton, New Jersey in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

2007 – Buddhist monks join anti-government protesters in Myanmar, starting what some call the Saffron Revolution

Lectures by Rudolf Steiner on this date

***

Van James

Calendar of the Soul Twenty-sixth Week (9-17-16 to 9-23-16)

O Nature, your maternal life

I bear within the essence of my will.

And my will’s fiery energy

Shall steel my spirit striving,

That sense of self springs forth from it

To hold me in myself.

~Rudolf Steiner

***

Ideas are for Anthroposophy

Vessels, formed out of love,

Into which the being of humanity, spiritually,

Is brought from the spiritual worlds.

Clothed in thoughts formed with love

The light of true humanity

Shall shine through Anthroposophy.

And knowledge is but the form

In which through humanity

It shall be possible

That the true spirit from the widths of the world

Will focus in human hearts

It may enlighten human thought.

And as Anthroposophy

Really can only be grasped through love,

Therefore it is love creating

If it is grasped by the true being of humanity.

Therefore, in the midst of furious hatred

A place of love could be built in Dornach.

And words

Will not be coined in the Anthroposophical realm

As they are usually coined today.

Words are formed

That are all intrinsically pleas.

Every word in Anthroposophy

If it is spoken in the right sense

Is fundamentally a plea

A reverent plea:

A plea

That the spirit may come down to humankind.

~ Rudolf Steiner, From the 1922 The Christmas Foundation; Beginning of a Cosmic Age

May Human Beings Hear it…XOX ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Penetrate to the heart of the core of the root…

September 17, 2016Autumn, Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Meditation, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

17 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: Now the Moon shines below the Great Square of Pegasus. From the Great Square’s left corner extends a big line of three stars, running to the lower left, that mark the head, backbone & leg of the constellation Andromeda. The line of three includes the Square’s corner

Upper left from the end of this line, you’ll find W-shaped Cassiopeia tilting up

Skywatchers with an unobstructed horizon toward the west-southwest should keep an eye out for Venus this week, minutes after sunset, it shines so brilliantly that it stands out against the bright twilight. The star Spica, is to her lower left

***

I turn to history not for lessons but to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for myself a sense of responsibility for the state of the human conscience ~ Zbigniew Herbert (from Chris Manvell)

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1179 – Deathday of Hildegard of Bingen, “the Sybil of the Rhine” a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, & polymath.

She is considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. One of her works as a composer, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama, the oldest surviving morality play. She wrote theological, botanical, & medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, & poems, while supervising miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, Scivias. She is also noted for the invention of a constructed language known as Lingua Ignota.

Hildegard 1st saw “The Shade of the Living Light” at the age of three. Hildegard was hesitant to share her visions, but at the age of 42, Hildegard received instruction from God, to “write down that which you see and hear.” Still hesitant to record her visions, Hildegard became physically ill. The illustrations recorded in the book of Scivias were visions that Hildegard experienced, causing her great suffering: “But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] I set my hand to the writing. While I was doing it, I sensed, the deep profundity of scriptural exposition; and, raising myself from illness by the strength I received, I brought this work to a close – though just barely – in ten years. (…) And I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, ‘Cry out therefore, and write thus!’

Hildegard’s visions caused her to see humans as “living sparks” of God’s love.

On 17 September 1179, when Hildegard died, her sisters claimed they saw two streams of light appear in the skies & cross over the room where she was dying.

“Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around Him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honor. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground, and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along. Thus am I, a feather on the breath of God.”

Howard Chandler Christy

1787 – The United States Constitution is signed in Philadelphia

1859 – Joshua A. Norton declares himself “Norton I, Emperor of the United States.” Born in England, Norton spent most of his early life in South Africa, he emigrated to San Francisco with an inheritance, but he lost his fortune investing in Peruvian rice & Norton’s public prominence faded. He reemerged to lay claim to the position of Emperor of the United States, & ‘Protector of Mexico’. He was treated deferentially in San Francisco, &currency issued in his name was honored in the establishments he frequented.

Though some considered him insane or eccentric, citizens of San Francisco celebrated his regal presence & his proclamations, such as his order that the United States Congress be dissolved by force & his numerous decrees calling for a bridge crossing connecting San Francisco to Oakland, &a corresponding tunnel to be built under San Francisco Bay.

At his funeral two days later, nearly 30,000 people packed the streets of San Francisco to pay homage. Norton has been immortalized as the basis of characters in the literature of writers Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christopher Moore, Maurice De Bevere, Selma Lagerlöf, & Neil Gaiman

1908 – The Wright Flyer flown by Orville Wright, with Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge as passenger, crashes, killing Selfridge. He becomes the first airplane fatality

1916 –Manfred von Richthofen (“The Red Baron“), a flying ace of the German Luftstreitkräfte, wins his first aerial combat near Cambrai, France, in World War I

1928 – The Okeechobee hurricane strikes southeastern Florida, killing more than 2,500 people. It is the third deadliest natural disaster in United States history, behind the Galveston hurricane of 1900 & the 1906 San Francisco earthquake

1939 –The Soviet Union joins Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in World War II

1939 –German submarine U-29 sinks the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous in World War II

1948 – The Lehi, also known as the Stern gang, assassinates Count Folke Bernadotte, who was appointed by the United Nations to mediate between the Arab nations & Israel. Lehi = “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel” was a Zionist paramilitary organization founded by Avraham (“Yair”) Stern in Palestine. Its aim was to evict the British authorities from Palestine by force, allowing unrestricted immigration of Jews & the formation of a Jewish state, a ‘new totalitarian Hebrew republic’

1961 – Deathday of Dag Hammarskjöld, Swedish diplomat, economist, author & the second secretary-general of the United Nations. Soon after his appointment Hammarskjöld was interviewed on radio by Edward R. Murrow. In this talk he declared: “But the explanation of how man should live a life of active social service in full harmony with himself as a member of the community of spirit, I found in the writings of those great medieval mystics [Meister Eckhart and Jan van Ruysbroek] for whom ‘self-surrender’ had been the way to self-realization, and who in ‘singleness of mind’ and ‘inwardness’ had found strength to say yes to every demand which the needs of their neighbours made them face, and to say yes also to every fate life had in store for them when they followed the call of duty as they understood it.”

He was en route to negotiate a cease-fire on 18 September when his plane crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia. Hammarskjöld & fifteen others died in the crash. The circumstances of the incident are still not clear. There is some evidence that suggests the plane was shot down. Göran Björkdahl (a Swedish aid worker) wrote in 2011 that he believed Dag Hammarskjöld’s 1961 death was a murder committed in part to benefit mining companies like Union Minière, after Hammarskjöld had made the UN intervene in the Katanga crisis. Björkdahl based his assertion on interviews with witnesses of the plane crash & on archival documents. Former U.S. President Harry Truman commented that Hammarskjöld “was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said ‘when they killed him’.”

1978 – The Camp David Accords brokered by President Jimmy Carter, is signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin

2001 – The New York Stock Exchange reopens for trading after the September 11 attacks, the longest closure since the Great Depression

2006 – Fourpeaked Mountain in Alaska erupts, marking the first eruption for the long-dormant volcano in at least 10,000 years

2011 – Occupy Wall Street movement begins in Zuccotti Park, New York City

***

Hilma Af Klint

~In slanted sunlight O my soul

The ripening fruits of my thinking are aroused in certainty,

For I sense an essence kindred to my own…

Joyfully I can perceive

The Autumn-Spirt waking…

& then I know

That winter will spring in me

Like Summer of the soul…

***

Hilma Af Klint

Inner Sanctum – a guided imagination:

Let us take our breath into our thinking, bringing our awareness inward, into the secret reaches of our inner sanctum…

Penetrate to the heart of the core of the root…

Peer down through the cracks in the surface, all the way to the center…

Treat the darkness there, as the source, of light, a cleverly disguised treasure, waiting to be re-discovered…a repository of raw material that will fuel the fires of inspiration, a place where we can go to practice the high art of redemption…

Let’s dare to be curious about the amazing sacraments that lie beneath the obvious questions…To open that mysterious door, that leads to the even more mysterious door, that will take us to the most private, yet inclusive, fertile oasis of all…as we aspire to wrestle tenderly with the unripe side of our nature, until it agrees to share its hidden treasures with the rest of us…

Then the immediate future, the eternal now, will bring cathartic revelations leading to spiritual insights & ingenious changes in the way we dance our life…

You are potentially a genius, we all are…Perhaps not in the same way that Einstein & Beethoven were, but still: We possess some brilliant capacity or set of skills that is exquisitely unique…

We are a masterpiece unlike any other that has ever lived…& you know what…the precise instructions we need to ripen into that glorious Genie have always been with us…The master plan…our special mission…our personal soul code…our secret song, that says, it’s our birthright to dance daily with the Divine Intelligence…

We have the power & the privilege to ask ‘The Source’ very specific questions about what we need to do NOW in order to activate more of our soul’s code, & to then receive a very specific answer…

So what question will you ask the Divine Intelligence today, as you commune in the sacred dance of yourself? …

Breathe in the Q breathe out the answer…open to receive it…breathe in the Q as you embody your answer in the healing moment of the now…

The Question is Love & Love Is the Answer…

Breathe in the Q breathe out the answer…& as you let yourself ripen & become the answer…just breathe & be…

And then slowly come, slowly come back into the body of this now…breathe in the now…& begin to renew your connection to the circle of life…bring your awareness back to the unity of the universe…into the sacred dance of your life…with the milk & manna still lingering on your lips…mingling with the salt of your skin…ready to be turned into honey-mead…we take the marriage feast back to the ring, into the circle that never stops…

Then Out into the world, to feed life with Loves healing mystery…grounded in every cell of our bodies…connected to the stars in our eyes…lived with every breath…as we take in the power we’ve raised in our imaginative thinking to fuel & feed our ‘balance in Change’…

See you in the circle

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

***

Michaelmas Festival: 7pm –9pm Friday 30 September, 2016

Optional Community Potluck Dinner 5pm – 6:45pm at The Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago

Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning

7pm – The Midwest Eurythmy Group will perform the Michaelmas Verse from Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul

Activating Our ‘Gemut’: The mind warmed by a loving heart & stimulated by the soul’s imaginative power – Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Copper Rod Eurythmy: ALL

If I’m to be a valiant knight, Then there’s a battle I must fight , And I must choose right from the start, Not strength of arm But strength of heart, My sword shall of good steel be made, And love the keenness of the blade

Grimm’s Tale “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” by Laura Donkel

Verse for the Michaelic Age: ALL

We must eradicate from the soul all fear and terror of what approaches us from the future. We must acquire serenity in all feelings and sensations about the future.

We must look forward with absolute equanimity to whatever may come. And we must think only that whatever comes is given to us by a cosmic guidance full of wisdom.

It is part of what we must learn in this age, namely, to live without any security in material existence and to live with pure trust in the ever-present help of the spiritual world.

Truly, nothing else will do if our courage is not to fail us. For this let us seek awakening to the reality of the spirit from within ourselves, every morning and every evening. ~Rudolf Steiner

Piano & Voice – Kristen Wray & David Wray performing Nacht und Träume + Ganymed – By Franz Schubert. Kristen Wray is a fiber and metal weaving artist, an energy healing practitioner, as well as a classically trained singer. David Wray is a classics professor at the University of Chicago specializing in ancient Roman poetry. Kristen and David regularly perform together in music student recitals on the university campus.

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

For more info. Contact Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer Ginsberg Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

Eclipse of the Harvest Moon in Virgo

September 16, 2016Insight, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

16 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: Full Moon exact at 11:54am CDT. Since this is the Full Moon closest to next week’s autumnal equinox, it is called the Harvest Moon. In early autumn, the Full Moon rises about half an hour later each night compared with a normal lag close to 50 minutes. The added early evening illumination helps farmers bringing in their crops.

This Harvest Moon also passes through Earth’s outer shadow today, bringing a penumbral lunar eclipse, which belongs to the Saros 147 series, & is number 8 of 70 eclipses in the series.

At the peak, which occurs at 8:44pm CDT, 91 percent of Luna will be immersed in the shadow & viewers across Europe, Asia, Africa, & Australia will see a distinct dusky shading over the Moon’s northern half.

But here in the US our satellite will look completely illuminated all night. You can find it rising in the east around sunset & peaking in the south by 1 am. The Moon lies among the dim background stars of Pisces, due south of the Great Square of Pegasus.

For an Astrosophy take on Virgo see https://sway.com/QHLPDrhBqJZW49FL

***

Reineke-Fuchs

Correction does much, but encouragement does more. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1701 – James Francis Edward Stuart, sometimes called the “Old Pretender“, becomes the Jacobite claimant to the thrones of England & Scotland

1732– In Campo Maior, Portugal, a storm hits the Armory & a violent explosion ensues, killing two thirds of its inhabitants over 30,000 people!

1863 – Robert College of Istanbul-Turkey, the first American educational institution outside the United States, is founded by Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist

1893 – Settlers make a land run for prime land in the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma

1908 – The General Motors Corporation is founded.

1920 – The Wall Street bombing: A bomb in a horse wagon explodes in front of the J. P. Morgan building in New York City killing 38 & injuring 400. The bombing was never solved, although investigators & historians believe it was carried out by Galleanists (Italian anarchists), a group responsible for a series of bombings the previous year. The attack was related to postwar social unrest, labor struggles, & anti-capitalist agitation in the United States

1922 – Founding of the Christian Community in Dornach by Rudolf Steiner

1925 – (For Fugi) Birthday of B.B. King

1947 – Typhoon Kathleen hits Saitama, Tokyo, at least 1,930 killed

1955 – The military coup to unseat President Juan Perón of Argentina is launched at midnight

1959 – The first successful photocopier, the Xerox 914, is introduced in a demonstration on live television from New York City

1961 – The United States National Hurricane Research Project drops eight cylinders of silver iodide into the eyewall of Hurricane Esther. Wind speed reduces by 10%, giving rise to Project Stormfury

1961 – Typhoon Nancy, with possibly the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone, makes landfall in Osaka, Japan, killing 173 people

1977 – Deathday of Maria Callas, Greek operatic soprano

1978 – The 7.4 Mw earthquake affects the city of Tabas, Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). At least 15,000 people were killed

1987 – The Montreal Protocol is signed to protect the ozone layer from depletion

1990 – The railroad between the People’s Republic of China & Kazakhstan is completed at Dostyk, adding a sizable link to the concept of the Eurasian Land Bridge

1992 – Black Wednesday: The pound is forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism by currency speculators & is forced to devalue against the German mark.

1994 – The British government lifts the broadcasting ban imposed against members of Sinn Féin & Irish paramilitary groups

2004 – Hurricane Ivan makes landfall in Gulf Shores, Alabama as a Category 3 hurricane, killing 124

2007 – One-Two-GO Airlines Flight 269 carrying 128 crew & passengers crashes in Thailand killing 89 people

***

My POD (Poem Of the Day)

~In the grey twilight, no figs ripened,

No honey dripped from patient trees, no fragrant boughs soothed…

In that place of hidden things

I was made of nothing

The stone was wet & cold

The thick sky loomed

& bid me enter further

~hag

***

Eclipse of the Harvest Moon in Virgo

“…When there is an eclipse of the moon, the man of today merely says: “Now the earth comes between the sun and the moon; hence we see the shadow cast upon the moon by the earth.” That is the physical explanation. But in this case also the old initiate knew that a spiritual reality was behind the physical fact. He knew that when there is an eclipse of the moon, thoughts stream through darkness down upon the earth; and that such thoughts have a closer relationship with the subconscious life than with the conscious life of the human being. The old initiates often made use of a certain simile when speaking to their pupils. It is; of course, necessary to translate their words into modern language, but this is the gist of what they said: ‘Visionaries and dreamers love to go for rambles by moonlight, when the moon is full. There are, however, certain people who have no wish to receive the good thoughts coming to them from the cosmos, but who, on the contrary, are desirous of getting hold of evil, diabolical thoughts. Such people will choose the moment of a lunar eclipse for their nocturnal wanderings’.

Eclipses of the sun and moon, recurring as they do in the course of every year, may really be looked upon as “safety-valves.” A safety-valve is there to avert danger, to provide an outlet for something or other — steam, for instance — at the right moment. The lunar eclipse, exists for the purpose of allowing the evil thoughts which are present in the cosmos to approach those human beings who are desirous of being possessed by them. people do not, as a rule, act in full consciousness, but the facts are nevertheless real — just as real as the attraction of a magnet for small particles of iron. Such are the forces at work, in the cosmos.” ~Rudolf Steiner, Human Q’s & Cosmic A.

Today on this eclipse of the Full Harvest Moon, I am thinking about how Rudolf Steiner gave us hints to come to terms with ‘Evil’. He reveals that the gods themselves called their opponents into being. Humanity, striving toward Freedom, stands as the Tenth Hierarchy & has as its task to integrate the vast gifts of Nature & Spirit while accepting the possibility & finding the strength to lead evil back to the good.

On the Italian side of my family we had a tradition during an eclipse of the Moon: In Italy the Moon was represented by a mirror, so during an eclipse, my grandmother would breathe on her old hand-mirror made of silver. She told us that a she-wolf, chased away from the flocks by the farmers, was so hungry that she swallowed the Moon during an eclipse, & that by breathing on the mirror we could cause the wolf to cough the moon back up & return it to the sky.

The Vikings tell a tale about two wolves who wish to eat the Sun & Moon. Skoll (repulsion) goes after the Sun, & Hati, running ahead of the Sun, goes after the Moon. When either are caught, there is an eclipse. When this happens, the people on Earth rush to rescue the Sun or Moon by making as much noise as they can in hopes of scaring off the wolves. Banging on pots & pans did the trick.

These cultural examples, of which there are many, may seem ‘superstitious’ thru modern eyes, but they were a call to humanity to take action, to be present, to take part.

We are still called to put our will force into action, only now we must meet the darkness with an awakened consciousness. We must stand as Michaelic warriors, holding the shield of the sun in our hearts, reflecting the Christ light into the night.

Today at noon & at 8 pm I will do 3 Hallelujah’s.

Will you stand with me?

See you in the shadow

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Daisy Hu

Cognitive Ritual

~Confessions of a Modern Rosicrucian

Monthly Archives: September 2016

Look at the Words in your Heart

Becoming Mystic Activists

Ideas are for Anthroposophy-Vessels, formed out of love

Penetrate to the heart of the core of the root…

Eclipse of the Harvest Moon in Virgo

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