Daily Archives: July 2, 2021

Pneumatosophy

Basking in The Light and Sound Painting by Eric Chifunda

“…When we experience a sound, we experience it with the whole organism. We always experience a symphony with the entire organism. When we listen to a piece of music, the inner process is this: We transpose our whole breathing process into a distinctly definite rhythm, into definite musical processes caused by the composition itself. These configurations of our “air formed” inner being strike the brain’s forms; as they are thrust back, it gives us a musical impression. Within us, there is always a sense of touching light through sound.

Hold fast to the fact that there constantly arises in us a sense of touching light by means of sound. The sound world within us, the sound-creating organism, is really an organ of touch for the light. Light is really always the outer element; sound is the inner.

Thought: breathing in – revelation

Will: breathing out – acknowledgment

Touching light (the outer) through sound (the inner)

Touching cosmic thought through the human will.

The inner touches the outer. You really comprehend yourself correctly in your essential nature only when you conceive of yourself as a special being, lifted from the cosmic harmony of the spheres. One’s being feels around in the light by touch, and in the configuration of the light, sound perceives the nature of the cosmos. It is true only in our time that we actually have a sense of touching cosmic thought through the human will..” ~ Rudolf Steiner, PNEUMATOSOPHY, Finding and Formulating the Cosmic Word Through Breathing in and Breathing out, Dornach 1 April 1922

 2 July 2020 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Venus continues to shine low in the northwest during twilight. Mars, is to her upper left. They set before twilight’s end. Watch the two planets close in on each other day by day. They’ll be in conjunction, on my birthdayJuly 12th…

Today is the midpoint of the year. There were 182 days before today & 182 days after.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day (RSarchives) 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY (Rudolf Steiner’s original Calendar of the Soul; The Present Age, Wikipedia)

church of Kremsmünster in Upper Austria

Maria Heimsuchung – Rudolf Steiner lists this in his original Calendar othe Soul, as an ancient German Feast Day celebrating the Visitation Of Mary to Elisabeth.

437 – Emperor Valentinian III begins his reign over & ongoing dismemberment the Western Roman Empire.

1566 – Deathday of Nostradamus, French astrologer & author

1698 – Thomas Savery patents the first steam engine

ICONOGRAPHIE CHRÉTIENNE

1778 – Deathday of Procopius of Caesarea the last major historian of the ancient Western world. He Accompanied the Roman general Belisarius in the wars of the Emperor Justinian, writing the Wars (or Histories), the Buildings of Justinian & the celebrated (& infamous) Secret History discovered centuries later in the Vatican Library. The Secret History reveals his deep disillusion with the emperor Justinian & his wife, Empress Theodora, as well as Belisarius, his former commander & patron, & Antonina, Belisarius’ wife. The anecdotes expose the secret springs of their public actions, as well as their private lives. Justinian is portrayed as cruel, venal, prodigal & incompetent; as for Theodora, the reader is treated to the most detailed & titillating portrayals of vulgarity & insatiable lust combined with shrewish & calculating mean-spiritedness: “Often, even in the theatre, in the sight of all the people, she removed her costume and stood nude in their midst, except for a girdle about the groin: not that she was abashed at revealing that, too, to the audience, but because there was a law against appearing altogether naked on the stage, without at least this much of a fig-leaf. Covered thus with a ribbon, she would sink down to the stage floor and recline on her back. Slaves to whom the duty was entrusted would then scatter grains of barley from above into the calyx of this passion flower, whence geese, trained for the purpose, would next pick the grains one by one with their bills and eat.”

Her husband Justinian, meanwhile, was a monster whose head could suddenly vanish—at least according to this passage: “And some of those who have been with Justinian at the palace late at night, men who were pure of spirit, have thought they saw a strange demoniac form taking his place. One man said that the Emperor suddenly rose from his throne and walked about, and indeed he was never wont to remain sitting for long, and immediately Justinian’s head vanished, while the rest of his body seemed to ebb and flow; whereat the beholder stood aghast and fearful, wondering if his eyes were deceiving him. But presently he perceived the vanished head filling out and joining the body again as strangely as it had left it.”

1816 – The French frigate Méduse struck the Bank of Arguin & 151 people on board had to be evacuated on an improvised raft, a case immortalised by Géricault’s painting The Raft of the Medusa

1822 – Thirty-five slaves are hanged in South Carolina, including Denmark Vesey, after being accused of organizing a slave rebellion

1839 – Twenty miles off the coast of Cuba, 53 rebelling African slaves led by Joseph Cinqué take over the slave ship Amistad

1897 – British-Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi obtains a patent for radio in London

1900 – The first Zeppelin flight takes place on Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany

1921 – U.S. President Warren G. Harding signs the Knox–Porter Resolution formally ending the war between the United States & Imperial Germany

1934 – The Night of the Long Knives, sometimes called Operation Hummingbird, or in Germany, sometimes mockingly called Reichsmordwoche (Reich Murder Week), a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political executions. Leading members of the left-wing Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), along with its figurehead, Gregor Strasser, were killed, as were prominent conservative anti-Nazis (such as former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher & Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had suppressed Adolf Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923). Many of those killed were leaders of the Sturmabteilung (SA) – the paramilitary Brownshirts.

Hitler moved against the SA & its leader, Ernst Röhm because he saw the independence of the SA as a direct threat to his newly gained political power. Hitler was uncomfortable with Röhm’s outspoken support for a “second revolution” to redistribute wealth.

At least 85 people died during the purge, although the final death toll may have been in the hundreds, & more than a thousand perceived opponents were arrested. Most of the killings were carried out by the Schutzstaffel (SS) & the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei), the regime’s secret police. The purge provided a legal grounding for the Nazi regime, as the German courts & cabinet quickly swept aside centuries of legal prohibition against extra-judicial killings to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime. The Night of the Long Knives was a turning point for the German government. It established Hitler as “the supreme judge of the German people,” as he put it in his July 13, 1934 speech to the Reichstag. “The New York Times”stated that Hitler had acted to crush a revolt & that SA leader Ernst Röhm had committed suicide.

1947 – World UFO Day, commemorating the supposed UFO crash at Roswell

1964 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 meant to prohibit segregation in public places

1976 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was not inherently cruel or unusual.

2001 – The AbioCor self-contained artificial heart is first implanted

Barbara Bagan

pod (poem of the day)

at the whim
of a fickle wind
dithering butterflies

Angela Foster

Invitation to a Summer Practice and Research Group working with
Rudolf Steiner’s 6 Essential Exercises alongside the Eightfold / Daily Exercise Path.
We will have a daily 15-minute Zoom meeting for 6 weeks.

11 am CDT – Today Sally Greenberg & Hazel Archer

Week Three: Equanimity

Fridays: Right Memory

Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/266986103?pwd=bXU4a0EvMmJkMDZTR0Rqcm0xZ0pUZz09 Meeting ID: 266 986 103 Passcode: 345338