2 November 2016 – Astro-Weather: The Moon hangs above Saturn low in the southwest, while much-brighter Venus looks on from the left. And can you still detect Antares below them, right down near the horizon?

***

 Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

 ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

HEALING WILL COME TO OUR AGE when the thoughts and ideas that are applied to social conditions and political life are in living contact with spiritual reality. ~Rudolf Steiner

Casper David Fredrich

All Souls’ Day

1699 – Birthday of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, French painter & educator

1795 – The French Directory, a five-man revolutionary government, is created, which governed France until it was overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte in the Coup of 18 Brumaire (8-9 November 1799) & replaced by the Consulate. It gave its name to the final four years of the French Revolution.

1755 – Birthday of Marie Antoinette, Austrian-French queen consort of Louis XVI of France

1920 –KDKA of Pittsburgh starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast is the result of the United States presidential election

1930 – Haile Selassie is crowned emperor of Ethiopia.

1936 – The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is established

1936 – The British Broadcasting Corporation initiates the BBC Television Service

1965 – Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, sets himself on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war

***

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~The Scythe
Singing against the whetstone
Are my thoughts
Sharpening in the dark
~hag

***

All Soul’s’ Day

Most cultures & many great minds throughout the ages have cultivated a connection with those who have passed through the gate of death.

“This is what it comes down to: that we learn to experience that those who have passed through the gate of death have only assumed another form. Having died, they stand before our feelings like those who, through life circumstances, have traveled to distant lands, where we can follow them only later. We have therefore nothing to bear but a time of seeming separation. Spiritual science must help us learn to feel & experience this in the most living way we can”. ~ Rudolf Steiner, 1915

Pre-Christian rites for the deceased retained such a strong hold on the imagination that a liturgical commemoration was not observed until the early Middle Ages, when monastic communities began to mark an annual day of prayer for the departed members.

In the middle of the 11th century, St. Odilo, abbot of Cluny, France, decreed that all monasteries offer special prayers & sing the Office for the Dead on November 2, the day after the feast of All Saints. The custom spread from Cluny & was finally adopted throughout the Roman Church.

The underpinning of the feast is the acknowledgment of the connection of humanity with the spiritual world. Since few people achieve perfection in this life but, rather, go to the grave with work still to be done, some period of purification is necessary before a soul comes face-to-face with the gods. The Council of Trent affirmed a purgatory state (Anthroposophers would call it Kamaloca) & insisted that the prayers of the living can speed the process of purification.

“Know the spiritual world! Then, among the many other blessings that humanity will gain will be this: that the living and the dead will be able to form a unity”. ~Rudolf Steiner, November 7, 1916

Verses for Our Beloved Dead

May my heart-love reach to soul-love.
May my love’s warmth shine to spirit-light.
Thus, I draw near to you.
Thinking spiritual thoughts WITH you,
Feeling cosmic love IN you,
Willing in spirit THROUGH you –
Weaving with you
One in experience. ~Rudolf Steiner

***
May my love BE for you
In the spirit-realm.
May my seeking soul find your soul.
May MY thinking of YOUR being
Ease your cold,
Ease your heat.
In this way, we shall be united;
I with you ,
You with me. ~Rudolf Steiner

***

“I have made ready a room
here in my heart
with walls of warmth
and windows of color
towards every side of the cosmos.

Oceans, mountains, and clouds are without.
within — loving and light.
And here I invite you to come,
dear being I love.

Lead me in what you have learned
now you have left your body
after so long suffering
and become a heavenly star:
the up-rising in dying!”

~Albert Steffan
From the collection “The Power for Resurrection’s Flight”

***

Alex Grey

Join us for our Annual All Souls Festival

Especially scheduled this year on Election Night Tuesday 8 November 2016

Potluck 6 pm, Festival 7 pm – 9 pm

Get away from the media frenzy- As We Create a Healing Sanctuary thru Story & SongTo Honor Our Dearly Departed working with us from the Spiritual World

“Feel how we gaze lovingly into heights that now call you to other work.
May your power reach out from spirit-realms to the friends you left behind.

Hear our soul’s request sent to you in confidence;
We need here, for our earthly work, strong power from spirit lands-
We thank our friends now dead for this.

A hope that makes us happy, a loss that pains us deeply:
Let us hope that you light our lives, far-and-near, un-lost,
A soul-star in the spiritual firmament.”  ~Rudolf Steiner

Nancy Melvin will lead us in a song-circle

Engage with Columbia  the Folk-Spirit of America, & The Founding Mothers & Fathers of our country, as well as the Native Americans who were here before uswith Hazel Archer Ginsberg 

Contact Deborah Rogers with the names of your beloved ones who have died this year, to be read in the circle beewisdom33@yahoo.com

***

Saturday  12 November  2016 Closing event

Calaj.com Artists Matthew Schaefer and Janet Trierweiler Schaefer present:

“Silent Lecture” Art Exhibit & Discussion 

3pm – 8pm Paintings on view (in the un-rented space next to the Branch)

6:30pm – Artist Discussion – topics may include:

                         Setting limits to hold the limitless.      

                         Human systems at work.

                         The fallible element, how it works in art.

                         The steps or ritual.

                         The visible/invisible origin.

                         Finding the spiritual in art through a primitive gesture.

                         A cognitive transformation, instinct to intuition.

Snacks to Share Encouraged

For more info. Contact  Hazel Archer Ginsberg

1 November 2016 – Astro-Weather: Venus, Saturn, & the thin crescent Moon shine through the fading twilight low in the southwest.

Draw a line from Altair, the brightest star high in the southwest after dark, to Vega, the brightest high in the west. Continue the line onward half as far, & you hit the Lozenge: the pointy-nosed head of Draco, the Dragon

***

“We understand only the very smallest part of human history and of our own life if we consider it in its external aspect, I mean in that aspect which we see from the limited view-point of our earthly life between birth and death. It is impossible to comprehend the inner motives of history and life unless we turn our gaze to that spiritual background which underlies the outer, physical happenings”. ~Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships, Volume IV: Lecture III

 Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

 ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Fra Angelico

ALL SAINTS DAY “After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands…. [One of the elders] said to me, ‘These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9,14)

The earliest observance of a feast in honor of all the saints is an early fourth-century commemoration of “all the martyrs.” In the early seventh century, after successive waves of invaders plundered the catacombs, Pope Boniface IV gathered up some 28 wagonloads of bones & reinterred them beneath the Pantheon, a Roman temple dedicated to all the gods. The pope rededicated the shrine as a Christian church. According to Venerable Bede, the pope intended “that the memory of all the saints might in the future be honored in the place which had formerly been dedicated to the worship not of gods but of demons” (On the Calculation of Time).

The Anglo-Saxon theologian Alcuin observed the feast on November 1 in 800, as did his friend Arno, Bishop of Salzburg. Rome finally adopted that date in the ninth century.

The Massacre of the Innocents, part of the El Dia de los Muertos celebration, honors the biblical account of infanticide by Herod. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the vicinity of Bethlehem, in an attempt to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn King of the Jews whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi. Understood as the fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy: “Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, ‘A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more”.

1512 – The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo, is exhibited to the public for the first time.

1520 – The Strait of Magellan, the passage immediately south of South America connecting the Pacific & the Atlantic Oceans, is first ‘discovered’ & navigated by Ferdinand Magellan during the first recorded circumnavigation voyage

1570 – The All Saints’ Flood devastates the Dutch coast, breaking the dikes. The total number of dead in the tens of thousands, 100,000 people became homeless. Livestock was lost in huge numbers. Winter stocks of food & fodder were destroyed.

1604 – William Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello is performed for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London

1611 – Shakespeare’s play The Tempest is performed for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London

1755 – In Portugal, Lisbon is totally devastated by a massive earthquake & tsunami, killing 90,000 people

1765 – The British Parliament enacts the Stamp Act on the Thirteen Colonies in order to help pay for British military operations in North America

1838 –Birthday of Khedrup Gyatso – 11th Dalai Lama

1870 – In the United States, the Weather Bureau (later renamed the National Weather Service) makes its first official meteorological forecast

1911 – The first dropping of a bomb from an aircraft in combat, during the Italo-Turkish War

1918 – Malbone Street Wreck: The worst rapid transit accident in US history occurs under the intersection of Malbone Street & Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, with 202 deaths

1941 – American photographer Ansel Adams takes a picture of a moonrise over the town of Hernandez, New Mexico that would become one of the most famous images in the history of photography. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes hired Adams for six months to create photographs of lands under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior. Adams was accompanied by his young son Michael & his best friend Cedric Wright on a long road trip around the west. They came upon the scene while traveling through the Chama River valley toward Española in late afternoon on November 1.

1948 – Off southern Manchuria, 6,000 people die as a Chinese merchant ship explodes & sinks

1950 – Pope Pius XII claims papal infallibility when he formally defines the dogma of the Assumption of Mary

1951 – Operation Buster–Jangle: 6,500 American soldiers are exposed to ‘Desert Rock’ atomic explosions for training purposes in Nevada. Participation is not voluntary

1952 – The United States successfully detonates Ivy Mike, the first thermonuclear device, at the Eniwetok atoll. The explosion had a yield of ten megatons TNT equivalent

1955 – The bombing of United Airlines Flight 629 occurs near Longmont, Colorado, killing all 39 passengers & five crew members aboard. Blown up with dynamite placed in the checked luggage by Jack Gilbert Graham to kill his mother as revenge for his childhood & to obtain a large life insurance payout. Within 15 months of the explosion, Graham—who already had an extensive criminal record—was tried, convicted, & executed for the crime

1956 – The Springhill mining disaster in Springhill, Nova Scotia kills 39 miners; 88 are rescued

1957 – The Mackinac Bridge, the world’s longest suspension bridge at the time, opens to traffic connecting Michigan’s upper & lower peninsulas

1960 –John F. Kennedy announces his idea of the Peace Corps

1963 – The Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, with the largest radio telescope ever constructed, officially opens

1970 – Club 5-7 fire in Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, France kills 146 young people

1982 – Honda becomes the first Asian automobile company to produce cars in the United States with the opening of its factory in Marysville, Ohio; a Honda Accord is the first car produced there

2013 – Paul Anthony Ciancia opens fire at Los Angeles International Airport, killing a US Transportation Security Administration employee, & wounding seven other people. After the shooting ended, Ciancia was found to be carrying a note stating that he “wanted to kill TSA”. It also mentioned “fiat currency” & the New World Order. The common theme of this theory is that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government—which will replace sovereign nation-states—& an all-encompassing propaganda whose ideology hails the establishment of the New World Order as the culmination of history’s progress. Many influential historical & contemporary figures are said to be part of this cabal that operates through many front organizations to orchestrate significant political & financial events, ranging from causing systemic crises to pushing through controversial policies, at both national & international levels, as steps in an ongoing plot to achieve world domination. The judge votes to keep Ciancia’s statements sealed.

***

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~My soul duels with worms
Hidden in the clay of my being
Tainting & gnawing the scroll of my mythos
Witch I spit
Out in
Vacillating antipathy…
Yet my heart is kept
Whole when I sing
Thru the Living Word…
A sinner marching with the Saints
I stretch canvas & continue
Practicing

***

Remedios Varo

Beloved Being – Life is a Loom…& we are the weavers of this fabric we call Reality…Our bodies: a bone spindle, shuttling bobbin Souls…Our fibers interlacing, Spinning straw into gold…& yes sometimes a strand of sorrow is added to the weft…These dark threads are just as needed in a weavers skillful hand as the threads of gold & silver in our patterns spun in sand…& now as the fire of life goes inward, & rest lies upon the patient land…Our Craft is the Art of Transforming the patchwork shadow, the wounded ancestor, the demure descendant, every loose fiber, Into a fabric of healed wholeness & Peace…

May your transformation be ever-full of grace.

 ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

PS. I will be in Boston the next few days & will return to the blog next week, where I hope to do a write-up on my time in the Tone Eurythmy Course with Jan Ranck

Until soon

xox

Join us for our Annual All Souls Festival

Especially scheduled this year on Election Night Tuesday 8 November 2016

Potluck 6 pm, Festival 7 pm – 9 pm

Get away from the media frenzy- As We Create a Healing Sanctuary thru Story & SongTo Honor Our Dearly Departed working with us from the Spiritual World

Nancy Melvin will lead us in a song-circle, & we will engage with Columbia  the Folk-Spirit of America, & The Founding Mothers & Fathers of our country, as well as the Native Americans who were here before us.

Contact Deborah Rogers with the names of your beloved ones who have died this year, to be read in the circle beewisdom33@yahoo.com

“Feel how we gaze lovingly into heights that now call you to other work.
May your power reach out from spirit-realms to the friends you left behind.

Hear our soul’s request sent to you in confidence;
We need here, for our earthly work, strong power from spirit lands-
We thank our friends now dead for this.

A hope that makes us happy, a loss that pains us deeply:
Let us hope that you light our lives, far-and-near, un-lost,
A soul-star in the spiritual firmament.”  ~Rudolf Steiner