It was an eerie Halloween in the hood last night. The usually packed streets were relatively clear. Folks put out special tables or passed candy thru PVC pipes to the trick-o-treaters. A lot of neighbors had house parties. Revelers called out Happy Halloween to each other, looking into your eyes with hope, & the joy of connection. Everyone wanted it to be a regular celebration, but despite (or perhaps because of) the usual high rate of alcoholic spirits, there was a pallor over the cheer. The wind was high & the sky had strangely beautiful rippling cloud formations that danced across the Full Blue Blood Moon.
We made a bon-fire with a few friends, & did a 500 biodynamic prep stir for the ancestors, in conjunction with performing the Halleluiah in eurythmy & singing songs to the ‘so-called-dead’. After an hour, some kids helped us distribute the ‘holy water’ in-between their main task of hunting for houses that were open to them as treaters. The land & the spiritual beings soaked it up. O so thirsty are the spirits for interaction with human intention.
At the CRC Soul to Soul online gathering earlier, it was clear that the dead are with us, wanting to commune, hoping to co-create with us a world of light.
My grandmother always said that the spirits of the dead wander from sunset until midnight on All Hallows. After midnight – on November 1, All Saints’ Day – the ghosts are said to go back into the light.
But the October 31 date for Halloween has been fixed by tradition. The true astrological cross-quarter day falls on November 7. So we can see that All Souls is really a season lasting until Advent.
In early times, the forbearer of Halloween, (or as my Celtic ancestors called it, Samhain) happened on the night that the Pleiades star cluster culminated at midnight – In other words, when the 7 sisters climbed to its highest point in the sky at midnight on or near the same date as this cross-quarter day. Because of the precession of the Equinoxes, this now occurs on November 21.
This morning the wind was howling so much & the spirits so restless I was up at 3 am, with a message from my dearly departed friend Joe G. which I got up to write down, but then I realized it was really 2 am, cause we are told to set our clocks back today (All Saints Day).
Fall Back they say. Usually this finagling with time bothers me. How dare ‘they’ just decide to change time, which plays havoc with our waking & sleeping rhythm. But for some reason this year, with everything else that’s shifting, I am thinking of it as a wakeup call, a reminder to not be complacent, taking time for granted – A prompt to see Time as relative, touching what is eternal.
And, of course, on top of all this, in 2 days time it is Election Day. Dear friends, don’t get caught up in the anxiety & fear that is already swirling in the media. Turn off the tv & Come join us instead, in creating a sacred space in person & online, to envision our true human destiny, thru Goethean Conversation, & Art, amidst the astral chaos:
All Souls Election Night Vigil
7 pm – 9 pm CT. Tuesday 3 November 2020
In-person in the Upper Room of the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4249 N. Lincoln Ave.
& also online Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/7052931041 Meeting ID: 705 293 1041
Through Social Sculpture, we will hold space with each other, connect with our Angel, the ‘so called dead’, the Being of America…etc…to bring healing on both sides of the Threshold, during Election Night 2020, & on into the future which we are committing to consciously co-create.
Welcome – Anne Nicholson
Verse – Deborah Rogers
The Art of Goethean Conversation – Hazel Archer-Ginsberg
Metamorphosis – Lucien Dante Lazar. Through a 5-point artistic metamorphosis that will weave throughout the evening we will rise in our thinking, & engage our will, to work with the beings of color, form & gesture from point to periphery.
Intermingling: Initiatives for NOW – The 3-Fold Social Order & ALIANT Alliance – Elderberries + ALL
Break-Out Session – groups of 3 for 15 minutes
Michael-Star Movement – Lucien + Nancy Melvin + ALL
Singing + Verse – Elizabeth Kelly
In-person at Elderberries Chicago & online
Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/7052931041 Meeting ID: 705 293 1041
***
Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner, Translated by Roy Sadler
It’s the third verse of the Light Quartet this week,
the voice of the Soprano’s inspired will for the spirit’s birth,
v31
The light from spirit depths
strives outwards like the sun,
becomes life’s strength of will
and shines in dullness of the senses
to free the forces
that ripen creative powers
in human work the soul initiates.
Its mirror verse is the voice of the Baritone,
incarnating spirit with imaginative power
in the first week of September,
v22,
The light from far and wide
lives on with inner power,
becomes the light of soul
and shines in depths of spirit
to free the fruits of cosmic self
that from them in the course of time
the human self will ripen.
Its opposite verse is the voice of the Tenor,
uniting with the spirit through the senses
in the last Easter verse, the week before Ascension,
a verse for life in the southern hemisphere now,
v5,
In light, whose fertile weaving into space
from spirit depths
reveals creative work of gods,
the being of the soul is shining, widening,
enlivened in the presence of the world
and resurrected
from narrow selfhood’s inner power.
Its mirror of the opposite, the complementary verse,
is the voice of the Alto, intuitive love uniting with the world
at the full moon in Leo (Rudolf Steiner’s birthday week),
v48,
In light, whose flowing from the heights
would be the world’s empowering of soul,
let shine world thought, the cosmic certainty
that solves soul riddles, and focusing
its radiant power in human hearts
awakens love.
This is a climax verse, fulfillment of thinking after human thought’s
first mention in v28 three weeks ago; and the last mention
of the heart (the 7th) and of love (the 3rd) until the heart appears
again at the winter solstice, v37, and love at Epiphany, v40.
***
The All Souls webinar put out the Anthroposophical Society, last year. Here is a link to the video recording https://zoom.us/…/2TH4VfAFaaXl75T9UgSHwxat-CKtdappGNmvyxdz1…
Also last year on Halloween I did a presentation at the Theosophical Society, called ‘The Descent of Inanna” with a different approach to the theme, centering on the origins, & a performance in eurythmy of the ancient Sumerian Myth. You can watch the video here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5J80cpOiJQ
***
1 November 2020
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
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, so as 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.
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
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
1960 –John F. Kennedy announces his idea of the Peace Corps
***
POD (Poem Of the Day)
~Today I am
The thought of myself
In my Mothers forehead…
May I listen to the voice of the messenger
Bringing her song up from the dead –
A silver star bruised & hanging on a cloud
As I roll gold into life
Like the scarab
A Sinner marching with the Saints
I stretch canvas & continue
Practicing
~hag
***
Saturday 7 November 2020,
On-line https://zoom.us/j/7052931041 Meeting ID: 705 293 1041
3 pm – 5 pm CT
‘Connections Revealed’
with Lelan Harris, Mary Ruud & Hazel Archer
The Connection Between Epidemics, the Souls of the Dead, & the Spiritual World – Leading thoughts by Hazel Archer-Ginsberg based on Spiritual Scientific research & indications from Rudolf Steiner
Inspirations by Lelan Harris – the executive director of Wise Cosmos Educational Initiative (WiseCosmos.org). Lelan is a healer, teacher, and leader with over 40 years of experience in vocational roles such as pastor, professor, and Waldorf school administrator. He offers developmental mentoring, spiritual training, and energy healing in order to raise up new generations of leaders in service at all levels to humanity, Earth, and cosmos.
Group Eurythmy with Mary Ruud
& Break out Sessions
Online hosted by Anne Nicholson on Zoom
https://zoom.us/j/7052931041 Meeting ID: 705 293 1041
