Monthly Archives: July 2021

Middle Ground

July 6, 2021History, Poetry, Speaking with the Stars~hag

Dear friends – I posted the lecture by Steiner on the Geographic Double from my offering American Magnetism in another part of cyber-space, & it got all kinds of wacky responses. Old Vikings declaring that Steiner was wrong since there was no ‘evidence’ that ships came to America from Norway before the history books say; or on the other extreme saying the Norwegians took this journey on the astral plane. The gentleman’s proof being that he himself has often does so…Everyone completely ignoring the whole point of the lecture: That the Ahrimanic Double is strongest in America.

Meanwhile around the breakfast table my husband CG said it seemed to him that the Ahrimanic double possessed the Europeans when they finally did come to America driving them to commit genocide on the Native Americans in the name of commerce & white supremacy.

This feels like where the real discussion should go.

The spiritual powers kept a veil over those destructive forces, which the Native Americans were not susceptible to, but which the Europeans were vulnerable to, for as long as possible, but when the Church wanted to have access to the abundant resources across the sea the conquers were released consequences be dammed.

Friends, to practice Spiritual Science means we have to be awake to our personal tendencies toward the Ahrimanic denial of spirit -I have to see it to believe it- & the flights of Luciferic fancy, which declares everything is only spirit. May we meet each other on the middle ground where the Christ can live among us…

~hag

Chart showing 4 positions of cresecent moon, Mercury, stars, and slanted line of ecliptic.

6 July 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: On the mornings of July 5 to 8, 2021, watch for the waning crescent moon to travel in front of the constellation Taurus the Bull. You’ll see the moon’s position change from day to day as it sweeps closer and closer to the sunrise.

The shrinking crescent first sweeps by the Pleiades star cluster (aka the
Seven Sisters). Then Bella Luna will pass the bright red star Aldebaran (Eye of the Bull in Taurus). It’s part of a V-shaped star grouping that forms the Bull’s face. This pattern is called the Hyades.

Finally, a very slim crescent will pass the bright yet elusive planet Mercury (occult Venus)

International Kissing Day

Feast Day of the 1^st Prophet – Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord shall give you by itself a sign; Behold, a virgin shall be with child and will bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel”

Feast Day of Saint Romulus of Fiesole. Like the Romulus of ancient Roman legend, the story goes he was also abandoned, suckled by a wolf, & captured, raised & baptized by Saint Peter

Jan Hus: The Goose before the Swan – Grace and Truth Community Church

1415 – Deathday of Jan Hus, considered the first Church reformer, since he lived before Luther, Calvin & Zwingli. Hus was a key predecessor to Protestantism. He was burned at the stake for heresy on this day.

1535 – Sir Thomas More is executed for treason against King Henry VIII of England

1887 – Birthday of Marc Chagall, Belarusian-French painter & poet

1892 – 3,800 striking steelworkers engage in a day-long battle with Pinkerton agents during the Homestead Strike, leaving ten dead & dozens wounded

1907 – Birthday of Frida Kahlo

1917 – World War I: Arabian troops led by Lawrence of Arabia capture Aqaba from the Ottoman Empire during the Arab Revolt

1935 – Birthday of the 14th Dalai Lama

1944 – Jackie Robinson refuses to move to the back of a bus, leading to a court-martial

1957 – John Lennon & Paul McCartney meet for the first time, as teenagers at Woolton Fete, three years before forming the Beatles

1962 – Deathday of William Faulkner, Nobel Prize laureate

1962 – As a part of Operation Plowshare, the Sedan nuclear test takes place

1971 – Deathday of Louis Armstrong

1988 – The Piper Alpha drilling platform in the North Sea is destroyed by explosions & fires. 167 oil workers are killed

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~beware the right tool in the wrong hands…
use the keen sword of discretion, wise choice & good judgement
to reclaim the wand of power
& whittle the world right…
~hag

Monday 12 July 2021 from 7 – 10 pm
The Chicago Chapter of ‘Merry Prep-stirs’ will meet to work with BD 500, practicing the Spiritual Science of Biodynamics so that ‘The Earth May Be Healed’.

Bon-Fire & Pot-Luck Social Gathering
on the occasion of Hazel’s natal return & the Conjunction of Venus and Mars

Please Bring Food & Drink, a song, poem or Question to Share in Community

RSVP by 10 July 2021 for address & directions to the Homestead of Hazel, Ultra-Violet Archer & Chuck Ginsberg

“And so we picture, from below upwards, in bluish, blackish shades the force of gravity, to which an upward impulse is given by the gnomes; and flitting all around the plant…[is] the undine power that blends and disperses substances as the plant grows upwards. From above downwards, from the sylphs, light is made to leave its imprint in the plant and molds and creates the form which descends as an ideal form and is taken up by the material womb of the earth; moreover fire spirits flit around the plant and concentrate cosmic warmth in tiny seed points. This is sent down to the gnomes together with the seed power, so that down there they can cause the plants to arise out of fire and life.” ~Rudolf Steiner, HARMONY OF THE CREATIVE WORD

Conjunction (appulse) between Venus (occult Mercury) & Mars on 12 July 2021

Columbia Bless America

July 5, 2021History, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

Ok here’s what wanted to come thru today – from Rudolf Steiner: “Chaos is arising because reality has changed; reality is becoming fuller and richer than anything people are able to think of or create in their heads. And we shall have to be clear in our minds that we are faced with a choice: to go on beating each other to a pulp, shooting at one another, in the way we do now, because we do not know how to bring order into the world, or to start developing concepts and ideas to match the complexity of the situation. A spiritual movement must exist where people seek to develop concepts which meet the real situation.” ~Fall of the Spirits of Darkness, Lecture 5: Changes in Humanity’s Spiritual Make-up, October 7, 1917

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated (with added titles) by Roy Sadler
SAINT JOHNSTIDE III
The Chalice of the Senses
v14
Completely open to the senses’ revelation
I lost my own impulse;
thought’s dream seemed, numbing me,
to rob me of myself,
but waking now there comes
in all the senses’ glory cosmic thought.

This is the first verse of the Soul Calendar’s second movement
that Karl König describes as the voice of the Baritone,
who will now be incarnating spirit with imaginative insight.
His final verse is at Michaelmas, after which in his mirror verses
the Soprano will be inspired to birth the Spirit Child at Christmas.
This week’s mirror verse is her final one.

NEW YEAR
The Chalice of the Spirit
v39
Completely open to the spirit’s revelation
I win the light of cosmic being;
thought’s clarifying power grows
to give me who I am
and waking from the power of thinking
my own real feeling flows.

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)

5 July 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: As dawn begins on the 6th, the waning crescent Moon hangs between the Pleiades above it and Aldebaran below it.

Feast Day of the Prophet Hosea (meaning ‘salvation’, ‘he saves’ or ‘he helps’) – often seen as a “prophet of doom”, but underneath his message of destruction is a promise of restoration. The Talmud claims that he was the greatest prophet of his generation. The period of Hosea’s ministry extended to some sixty years, and he was the only prophet of Israel of his time who left any written prophecy. “They that sow the wind reap the whirlwind”

Feast Day of St. Cyril & St. Methodius, two brothers – Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries-known as the “Apostles to the Slavs”. They are credited with devising the Glagolitic alphabet, the first alphabet used to transcribe Old Church Slavonic.

755 – Deathday of St. Boniface, destroyer of Celtic Christianity. Some traditions credit Saint Boniface with the invention of the Christmas tree. Boniface is celebrated as a missionary; he is regarded as a unifier of Europe, by German Catholics.

Birthday of St. Anselm Archbishop of Canterbury – Benedictine monk, abbot, philosopher and theologian of the Catholic Church, who held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. His works were copied and disseminated in his lifetime and exercised an influence on the Scholastics, including Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. His thoughts have guided much subsequent discussion on the procession of the Holy Spirit and the atonement. His work also anticipates much of the later controversies over free will and predestination.

As a child, he had a miraculous vision of God on the summit of the Becca di Nona near his home, with God asking his name, his home, and his quest before sharing bread with him.

Anselm’s canonization was requested of Pope Alexander III by Thomas Becket at the Council of Tours in 1163. Anselm was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church or the doctor Marianus (“Marian doctor”). A chapel of Canterbury Cathedral south of the high altar is dedicated to him; it includes a modern stained-glass representation of the saint.

1833 – Deathday of Nicephore Niepce, French inventor of the camera

1915 – In response to the First World War, Rudolf Steiner writes the essay “Thoughts during a time of war – for Germans and those who do not feel they must hate them”

POD (Poem Of the Day)

Columbia Bless America.
O ancient Spirit of Place
Appear again as the Dove of Liberty
& teach us how to fly
Into our true destiny
That we may weave the laurel
In evolutions revolution
In this time of great turning
Let the truth of our hearts entwine
To conquer terror with tenderness
~hag

American Magnetism

July 4, 2021History, Insight, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

This speaks to the best of America FREEDOM by Jon Batiste

Listen to “I think Speech’

Greetings Friends – May ‘Independence’ reverberate in our collective consciousness, as we work towards a Global Interdependence Independence -A mutual dependency upon the independence of every nation & its people – not imposed by the corporate elite, but out of the inner Freedom & love of the human being for humanity – Imagine everyone celebrating our differences with great admiration & respect…

Let’s remember the meaning of ‘Independence Day’ celebrated on the ‘4^th of July’ – It’s about freedom from oppression… ‘No taxation without representation’…& all that…the center point being the Declaration of Independence.

When was the last time you read this important document of our countries origin? You can print it off the net. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are, Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

Have we gained independence from one tyranny all those years ago, only to allow it to happen again on a world scale? Maybe it’s time to open our eyes & read the fine print of our birthright – reclaim our rights & go forward as a united community of World people, in peaceful justice, in equity, in reason – with compassion, having come through so much pain – to really start to, not just declare our independence, but to really live it – As individuals, as well as with the united community of the whole planet…

It’s interesting to look at what Spiritual Science has to say about America.

In ‘The Mystery of the Double: Geographic Medicine’, Rudolf Steiner tells us that when we are born we not only acquire a physical body we become permeated by an Ahrimanic double a being with ‘a Mephistophelian intelligence’, & ‘a very strong will’. Thru them we carry electrical streams in us.

‘These beings of purely Mephistophelian intelligence, want to conquer the earth, and to do this they need bodies; they do not have bodies of their own’. But they are afraid of death & have to leave us when we die.

‘Had the Mystery of Golgotha not occurred, conditions on earth would have been such that these beings would long ago have attained the possibility of remaining within the human being when he is karmically predestined for death. Then they would have completely triumphed over human evolution on earth, they would have become masters of human evolution on earth.’

This has long been known to certain occult brotherhoods. They withheld this from humanity. ‘These egotistically minded occult brotherhoods make it a power issue, intending thereby to enhance their own power.’

But the human being must learn about the double within ‘if the human race is not to experience endless hindrances, really endless horrors’.

‘This double is the creator of all physical illnesses that emerge spontaneously from within the human being; coming not through outer injuries, and not from the human soul; they come from this being. He is the creator of all organic illnesses.’

And Lucifer, Ahriman’s brother, ‘is the creator of all neurasthenic and neurotic illnesses’.

Thus medicine must become spiritual in two directions’…

The Earth as a living organism streams out‘different forces, among them magnetism and electricity’, as well as life-giving forces. ‘All these forces come up out of the earth and influence people in the most varied ways at different points on the earth. They influence the human being in various ways according to the geographical formation. This is a very important fact – The double uses these forces that stream up out of the earth.’

‘Some of these beings are especially pleased with the Eastern hemisphere: Europe, Asia, Africa. They choose to make use of the bodies of human beings born there. Others choose bodies born in the Western hemisphere, in America.’

So…’one of the most important tasks of the future will be to foster again something that has been interrupted: geographic medicine, medical geography…the connection of the illness-producing being in man with earthly geography, with all the fusions, with all the outward radiations that emerge from the earth in the various regions. It is very important for the human being to become acquainted with these things, for his life depends on it.’

‘For this reason spiritual science must now spread, the present time calls upon the human being to reach an understanding of these things in a conscious way in order to find a relationship to these things. The human being must become strong in this epoch in order to adapt his existence to these beings’.

But before the 5^th post Atlantean epoch the human being had to be protected from encountering the Ahrimanic double which is especially strong in America.

‘A really significant arrangement was required: Beginning in the ninth century and especially from the twelfth century on, the entire shipping exchange with America with the kind of ships there were at that time, was abolished’. This may sound very strange to you. You will say, “We have never heard anything like this in history.”

In many respects, history is just a fable convenue a legend; for in earlier centuries of European development, ships continually sailed from the Norway of that time to America.

Of course it was not called America it had a different name at that time. America was known to be the region where the magnetic forces particularly arose that brought the human being into relation with this double. For the clearest relations to the double proceed from that region of the earth that comprises the American continent. And in the earlier centuries people sailed over to America in Norwegian ships and studied illnesses there. The illnesses in America brought about under the influence of earthly magnetism were studied by Europe.

Then it was necessary for the connection with America to be gradually forgotten, and this was essentially brought about by the Roman Catholic Church through its edicts.

And only after the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch was America ‘rediscovered’ in a physical, sense-perceptible way.

Europe had to be protected for a long time from all these influences; and it could not have been protected if the European world had not been completely shut off from America in the centuries before the fifteenth century..”

And so dear friends how does this picture add to the history of our Country?

Something to contemplate on this 245^th year anniversary of ‘Independence’.

~hag

4th of July 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Mercury reaches greatest western elongation 3 P.M. CDT. If you’re already up early to enjoy the Moon & Uranus, you can also find this small planet in the morning sky. Mercury rises about 80 minutes before sunrise. Use Aldebaran, the eye of the Bull, as a signpost: This star rises 30 minutes earlier and sits due west of the messenger of the gods.

Sunrise: 5:37 A.M.
Sunset: 8:32 P.M.
Moonrise: 2:00 A.M.
Moonset: 3:54 P.M.
Moon Phase: Waning crescent (24%) ~astronomy.com

1054 – A supernova, is seen by Chinese Song dynasty, Arab, & Amerindian observers near the star Zeta Tauri. For several months it remains bright enough to be seen during the day. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula

1744 – The Iroquois are forced to cede lands between the Allegheny Mountains & the Ohio River to the British colonies

1776 – American Revolution: The United States Declaration of Independence is adopted by the Second Continental Congress

1826 – Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, dies the same day as John Adams, second president of the United States, on the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the United States Declaration of Independence.

1827 – Slavery is abolished in New York State

1855 – In Brooklyn, New York City, the first edition of Walt Whitman‘s book of poems, Leaves of Grass, is published

1862 – Lewis Carroll tells Alice Liddell a story that would grow into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

1863 – American Civil War: Siege of Vicksburg: Confederate Army surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant after 47 days of siege

1863 – American Civil War: The Army of Northern Virginia withdraws from the battlefield after losing the Battle of Gettysburg, signaling an end to the Southern invasion of the North

1886 – The people of France offer the Statue of Liberty to the people of the United States

1914 – The funeral of Archduke Franz Ferdinand & his wife Sophie takes place in Vienna, six days after their assassinations in Sarajevo

1918 – Bolsheviks kill Tsar Nicholas II of Russia & his family

1934 – Leo Szilard patents the chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb

1934 – Deathday of Marie Curie, French-Polish physicist & chemist, Nobel Prize laureate

1941 – Nazi troops massacre Polish scientists & writers in the captured Ukrainian city of Lviv

1941 – World War II: The Burning of the Riga synagogues with 300 Jews locked in the basement

1943 – World War II: The Battle of Kursk, the largest full-scale battle in history & the world’s largest tank battle, begins in Prokhorovka village

1950 – Radio Free Europe first broadcasts

1966 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Freedom of Information Act

~Mine is
A heart of ruby-red –
A Crimson hot
dark as murder on a Holy Day
pulsing sense organ.
Mine is a fist of emerald & gold –
the gnarled roots
of a rosewood bursting
with thorns
& bright blossoms
in the Sun…
~hag

Emancipation

July 3, 2021History, Insight, Meditation, Poetry~hag

Listen on the ‘I Think Speech’ podcast

Greetings friends on this EVE of our emancipation – May the dawning of the age of Aquarius start to rise in our hearts so when the divine ripening is upon us we will reap a true harvest of sister & brotherhood founded on Love & Peace. In the meantime let’s make every moment a milestone, where we step lightly to bring healing to each other & to our Mother Earth.

Every morning I go out into my wild garden. I do my meditations. I breathe in the sunrise. I watch & listen to the signs & signals from the natural world, ever present in my little piece of biodynamic bottomland at the edge of the Great Inland Sea of Chicago.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is garden-July-2-2020.jpg

The Milkweed is flowering & the butterflies have come to lay their eggs on the leaves. So fascinating to contemplate this delicate creature – I think of what Steiner says: “…it is the butterfly corona, which first calls us into earthly existence.” (Symphony of the Creative Word) I spoke about this in ‘The Crowning’.

The clover, feverfew, & spiderwort are rampant & the bees are all over it.

Bees have a special place in human history. The mythology, art & mystery that surrounds them is potent, & indicates a close & reciprocal relationship between the bee, the secrets of the Universe, & humanity, as partners in life’s great journey.

Traditionally the bee was perceived as a being that bridged the gap between the physical & the unseen world, the intermediary between two states of existence.

10 Best Master/Mistress of Animals images | Mistress, Animals, My favorite things

In many cultures priestesses or ‘illumined ones’ have been referred to as ‘Bees’. The bee was an emblem of Potnia, the Minoan-Mycenaean “Mistress”, also referred to as “The Pure Mother Bee”. Her priestesses received the name of “Melissa” which means bee.

Those worshipping Artemis & Demeter, as well as the Delphic priestess, are also referred to as a “bee”. Pindar, an Ancient Greek poet from Thebes, notes that she remained “the Delphic bee” long after Apollo had usurped the ancient oracle & shrine. “The Delphic priestess chewed a laurel leaf, & sought her inspiration in the honeycomb”.

The Homeric Hymn to Apollo acknowledges that Apollo’s gift of prophecy first came to him from three bee maidens, usually identified with the Thriae – a trinity of pre-Hellenic Aegean bee goddesses.

The Kalahari Desert’s Sand people tell of a bee that carried a mantis across a river. The exhausted bee left the mantis on a floating flower but planted a seed in the mantis’s body before it died. The seed grew to become the first human.

In Egyptian mythology, bees grew from the tears of the sun god Ra when they landed on the desert sand.

The bowstring on Hindu love god Kamadeva’s bow is made of honeybees.

Orators, powerful speakers, & those who can enrapture their audience thru their linguistic ability are said to have lips that have been anointed with honey.

From the earliest times of our agrarian history the relationship between farmers & the bees that pollinate & confirm their crops has been one of reciprocal respect. The bee is the agent of pollination, the catalyst that brings about change & the connection that facilitates fertilization, allowing the crop to mature, develop & reproduce. It is easy to see why their function is considered so important & why the bee is ascribed a mystical place within the human experience.

In the last decade there has been an alarming decline in bee colony numbers. It is a worldwide happening & indicative of a shift occurring within the planet’s own equilibrium – a call to ‘Repent, & make straight the path’, as John the Baptist would say.

The bees are allies; not only the key to our food supply, but an important intermediary, a messenger from those peripheral realms of human awareness where perceptions come from ‘beyond the veil’ – they are messengers of the Sun.

The bee carries a signal or a frequency that enables transformation; what is barren becomes fertile, initiating the process of regeneration.

The bee, in this context, represents an interlocutor between our immediate mundane awareness & the potential of human cognizance.

Look to the flora & fauna; experience & honor the elemental worlds; all nature – as messengers of what was, what is, & what is to come.

Yes, friends, we live in challenging times. Good, bad or indifferent is not a criteria; we are seeing events in our lifetimes that have a significant bearing upon the way human evolution will unfold.

The relationship between human interaction & the planet is fragile, & the most potent expression of what we will become – either architects of our own demise, or the agents of a transcendent future, is in our hands.

~hag

Painted Desert Moon & Venus with the Beehive Cluster ~astronomy.com

3 July 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: July’s early evening skies are given over to a race between Earth’s two closest neighbors: Venus and Mars. The Red Planet starts out ahead, but after a close conjunction on 12 July, Venus will pull into the lead.

Tonight, Mars sits east of Venus, in a sparse region of Cancer the Crab. Venus, blazing brightly is passing through a more interesting landscape: It’s skipping through the northern reaches of the famous Beehive Cluster (M44), also called Praesepe or the Manger. They’ll set around 9 pm CDT

Sunrise: 5:36 A.M.
Sunset: 8:32 P.M.
Moonrise: 1:14 A.M.
Moonset: 1:55 P.M.
Moon Phase: Waning crescent (42%)

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

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)

Those who work with the Original indications in the Calendar of the Soul know that Rudolf Steiner lists the birth & death days, as well as other significant occurrences of various individualities, along with the dates in the calendar. He said of this: “What is presented here can be useful to those who wish to follow the path of mankind’s spiritual development” ~Rudolf Steiner

Deathday of Cornelius – a Roman centurion who is considered to be the first Gentile to convert to the faith. Cornelius receives a vision in which an angel who instructs Cornelius to send the men of his household to Joppa, where they will find Simon Peter.

The conversion of Cornelius comes after a separate vision given to Simon Peter (Acts 10:10–16) himself. In the vision, Simon Peter sees all manner of beasts & birds being lowered from Heaven. A voice commands Simon Peter to eat. When he objects to eating unclean animals, the voice tells him not to call unclean that which God has cleansed. When Cornelius’ men arrive, Simon Peter understands that through this vision the Lord commanded the Apostle to preach the Word of God to the Gentiles.

283 – Deathday of Anatolius. Prior to becoming one of the great lights of the Church, he enjoyed considerable prestige at Alexandria, & was credited with a rich knowledge of arithmetic, geometry, physics, rhetoric, dialectic, & astronomy. He was one of the foremost scholars of his day in Aristotelean philosophy.

Deathday of St. Norbert of Xanten, who avoided ordination to the priesthood & even declined an appointment as bishop. One day as he rode to Vreden, a thunderbolt struck him off his horse. After this near-fatal accident, his faith deepened, he renounced his appointment at Court & returned to Xanten to lead a life of penance. St Norbert was a great devotee of the Eucharist & Our Lady.

1035 – William the Conqueror becomes the Duke of Normandy

Battle of Gettysburg Painting by War Is Hell Store

1863 – The U.S. Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, PA, ended after three days. It was a major victory for the North as Confederate troops retreated

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~corn & clouds & cattle are gods renewing…
i am the god of myself…
lift me up imagination into creation
to the geni of genesis
where the gods give us their hands
i feel Her here
at the back of my head…
~hag

You are welcome to freely view Video’s of past presentations

Pneumatosophy

July 2, 2021Celestial Event, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

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)

Maria Heimsuchung – Rudolf Steiner lists this in his original Calendar of the 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

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

pod (poem of the day)

at the whim
of a fickle wind
dithering butterflies

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

Cognitive Ritual

~Confessions of a Modern Rosicrucian

Monthly Archives: July 2021

Middle Ground

Columbia Bless America

American Magnetism

Emancipation

Pneumatosophy

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