Our Soul is the best friend we keep forgetting we have. It’s closer than our breath & older than death. It dreams like a mountain, laughs like a river, & communicates with us in the exuberantly mysterious style of the elements & the gods.
We are animated because of our soul-forces! She loves us with nonstop unconditional ingenuity. Isn’t it right, then, to devote at least one minute a day to acknowledge & honor our own Soul, as well as the World Soul, giving thanks for its blessings?
Our Anima mundi (Latin. Greek: ψυχὴ κόσμου Psychè Kósmou) = our intrinsic connection between all living things. Plato knew: This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence…a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related.
The Stoics believed it to be the only ‘vital force’ in the universe. Similar concepts are also held in systems of Eastern Philosophy such as in the Brahman-Atman of Hinduism, the Buddha-Nature in Mahayana Buddhism, & in the School of Yin-Yang, Taoism, & Neo-Confucianism as qi or chi.
Also found in the thoughts of Hermetic Philosophers like Paracelsus, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, Friedrich Schelling & in Hegel’s Geist (“Spirit”/”Mind”). Ralph Waldo Emerson published “The Over-Soul” in 1841, which was influenced by the Hindu conception of a ‘Universal Soul’.
In Jewish mysticism, a parallel concept is that of “Chokhmah Ila’ah”, Sophia, the All-Encompassing “Supernal Wisdom” that transcends, orders & vitalizes all of creation – a “cosmic consciousness” that empowers us to mitigate all division & conflict within creation.
This jives with ideas developed by folks like James Lovelock since the 1960s – in the Gaia Principle.
Sweet, Ok, so…
Dear Soul-Self. Beloved World-Soul, may we see ourselves in each other. Then we can Be. Yes the ‘Me’ becomes the ‘We’.
So be my slow-motion dance. Be my centennial supernova. Be my ripe pomegranate floating in a blue plastic swimming pool on the first day of Autumn, as I stand with my sword raised high. Be my handstand at sunrise, my whirlwind week in clown school, my joke shared with a Siberian shaman while shopping for socks. Be my puzzle with one piece missing. Be the waves crashing on a beach in New Zealand in the 23rd century. Be my golden hammer resting on the moss of a ten-million-year-old rock…
And what of the message that our World-Soul is sending us?
This kind of poetic thinking enlivens & prompts me to ask: What would it be like to take a trip in our imagination to the future, where we can visit the person we’ll be, say 7 years from today? What is the most important message you have to convey to that future Self?
And can we imagine what our Psychè Kósmou will be singing in from the future – Say 100 years from now?
Listen, can you hear it calling now…?
~hag
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21 August 2020 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Spot the crescent Moon low in the west-southwest in twilight. Look to her left for Spica twinkling into view.
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Anxiety and the World Soul
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Feast day of Our Lady of Knock, Queen of Ireland. The apparition in County Mayo occurred on the evening of August 21, 1879, the vigil of the octave of the feast of the Assumption. Those who witnessed the miracle ranged in age from five years old to seventy-five.
The apparition was described as follows: “Our Lady was wearing a large, brilliant crown and clothed in white garments. On her right was Saint Joseph, his head inclined toward her and on her left Saint John the Evangelist. To the left of Saint John was an altar on which stood a cross and a lamb.” Standing only a few feet off the ground, the Blessed Virgin wore a white cloak and was described by witnesses as being incredibly beautiful. She wore a bright golden crown, and appeared to be praying with her eyes looking toward heaven with her arms bend in front of her with her palms facing inward.
Fifteen parishioners stood to witness the apparition for two hours as they recited the rosary. Although it was daylight when the apparition began, the weather turned for the worse and it began to rain heavily. The area around the apparition appeared unaffected, however, & the ground remained dry as long as the vision lasted. She did not speak, but the gable of the church where the manifestation was made was covered with a cloud of light.
Saint Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus, also wore white robes and stood on the Virgin’s right. He inclined his head respectfully toward the Blessed Virgin. Saint John the Evangelist wore a miter, and appeared to be preaching as he held a book in his left hand.
Since then thousands of people have gone to Knock to pray to Our Lady. No sign of commercialism detracts from the purely religious atmosphere of that hallowed spot. People from all walks of life kneel in humble supplication before the shrine of Our Lady, fully confident that she has sanctified that spot by her apparition.
The rosary comprises the main portion of the devotion; the shrine is therefore appropriately called the Rosary Shrine. The “Knock Shrine Annual” relates many interesting stories of cures and conversions effected at the shrine.
1831 – Nat Turner leads black slaves in a rebellion in Virginia
1838 – Deathday of Adelbert von Chamisso, German botanist & poet. Author of Peter Schlemihl, a famous story about a man who sold his shadow
1858 – Birthday of Archduke Rudolf von Habsburg, Crown Prince of Austria. In 1889, he died in a suicide pact with his mistress, Baroness Mary Vetsera. His death left no direct male heir. As a consequence, his brother, Archduke Karl Ludwig, was next in the line. His death in 1896 made his oldest son, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive. In 1914, Franz Ferdinand’s assassination precipitated World War I & sparked a chain of events that caused the dynasty’s collapse. Rudolf Steiner spoke quite a bit about his former incarnations, the most important being as Nero, in Karmic Relationships Vol. 2, lectures 7, 27 & Vol. 4 lecture 24
1911 – The Mona Lisa is stolen by a Louvre employee
1914 – Deathday of Pope Pius X. particularly devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the specific title of Our Lady of Confidence; his papal encyclical Ad diem illum expresses his desire through Mary to renew all things in Christ, which he had defined as his motto. He promoted Thomas Aquinas as the principal philosophical method to be taught in Catholic institutions. After the 1908 Messina earthquake he filled the Apostolic Palace with refugees, long before the Italian government acted. He rejected any kind of favors for himself or his family
1921 – 1st publication of the weekly Das Goetheanum
1940 – Deathday of Leon Trotsky, murdered on Stalin’s orders
1968 – Deathday of Margareta Morgenstern, anthroposophist & wife of poet Christian Morgenstern
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August 27-30 How We Will 2020: 3-Folding our Cultural Revolution is continuing its journey of transforming our ideals into action. The theme this year is Forming Curative Communities: actively uniting with one another in the emerging economic, political/rights and social/cultural/spiritual forms seeking to reshape the ills plaguing humanity into a healthy social organism for our time. Please join us if you’d like to hear from, and collaborate with those on the front lines inspired out of the fruits of Rudolf Steiner’s work: can your own hopes for the world find a way to connect with others striving to do the good as our friend Bernard Lievegoed was wont to say? Our own hero Ella Baker shares: ‘we must not stop until we can get people to recognize that they themselves have to make the struggle for freedom and human dignity everyday, in the year, every year, until they win it.’
Invitation and Registration are now open:How We Will 2020
Schedule
Thursday August 27
9:00 Dottie and Frank: Welcome: Forming Curative Communities of Responsibility
9:30 Nana Woo and Truus Gareats: Eurythmy
9:45 Stan Padilla: New Fire
10:30 Break 15 minutes
11:00 Naim Edwards: Edible Landscapes
12:15 Lunch
1:30 Dottie Zold & Joan Jaeckel: Threefold Activism – 1919-1921 & Research Fellowship
2:15 Kait Ziegler: Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival – On the Front Lines
3:30 Break 30 minutes
4:00 Akil Bell: WILLING MOVEMENT: Three questions could support the inspiring of the formation of curative communities.
5:15 Dinner
6:30 Monika: Myriad Village – Co-creating Intentional Communities
7:15 Angela Foster: Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily
End 8 pm
Friday August 28
9:00 Truus Gareats & Nana Woo: Eurythmy
9:15 Stan Padilla: New Fire
9:45 Frank & Patrice: Unbreakable Agreement & ALIANT
10:20 Break 10 minutes
10:30 Michaela Gloeckler: Archetypal Pictures – Ita Wegman and the Young Doctors
Noon Lunch
1:15 Bart Eddy: Brightmoor Makers Rocking Hearts for Detroit
2:15 Melody Brink: StART international trauma pedagogy – Lesbos – On the Front Lines
3:00 John Bloom: Toward Justice Through Freedom
4:45 Dinner
6:00 Daniel Collett: Seeds
6:10 Kim Sherobbi: To Nurture Community Leadership – Birwood Community House & The James and Grace Lee Boggs Center
7:00 Angela Foster: Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily
Goethe’s Day of Birth
8:00 End
Saturday August 29
9:00 Truus Garaets & Nana Woo: Eurythmy
9:15 Stan Padilla: New Fire
9:30 Laura Summer: Art Dispersal – Art for 100% of the People
10:00 Michaela Gloeckler: Forward Together
11:30 Break 15 minutes
11:45 Melody Brink: The Birdhunters of Antropocenia in story-form, written by Nathaniel Williams and with original music by Aldo Lavaggi
12:20 Lunch
1:15 Bart Eddy: Ideas to Action
2:15 John Bloom: Capital, Money, Spirit and Matter
3:45 Break 30 minutes
4:15 Patrice Maynard: Prototyping ALIANT Alliance
5:30 Dinner
7:00 Brandon & Lucien: Song Offering & Painting
7:15 Community-led conversation: A Christian/Buddhist/Spirit Conversation: Money –what does love got to do with it?
8:15 End
Sunday August 30
9:00 Truus Garaets & Nana Woo: Eurythmy
9:15 Nicanor Perlas: The Future is What We Fight For
10:45 Break
11:00 Hazel Archer-Ginsberg: The New Isis Myth
11:30 Laura Summer: Art Dispersal
1:00 Lunch
2:00 Patrice Maynard: Prototyping ALIANT Alliance
3:15 Lucien: Tone, Words, Trees
3:45 Janna, Elizabeth & Frank: Standing Under the Sign of Michael
4:15 Stan & Robbi: Closing the Sacred Fire Community
5:00 End
EXTRA DAY FOR THOSE WISHING TO JOIN ON Monday, August 31st
9:00 Next Steps ALIANT: Patrice, Frank, Dottie together with friends will lead a conversation on next steps.
11:00 Mutual Aid Networks (MANS): Kait Ziegler of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival will share how she and GroundGamesLA raised $100,000 in a week’s time to support unprotected families during the Covid 19 early days by using the MANS format created by Stephanie Rearick of Madison Wisconsin.
Invitation and Registration are now open:How We Will 2020
