Monthly Archives: August 2021

Vreede’s Star

August 31, 2021History, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

“The stars bear for us the traces of the Deeds of the Gods which lead
through the Beings of the hierarchies to the frontiers of Divinity
Itself.” ~Elisabeth Vreed

Elisabeth Vreede

Greetings friends – Today in 1943 was the Death day of Elisabeth Vreede.

She was born in Holland, at The Hague, on 16 July 1879. She was the second child of a mother, devoted to charitable work & her father, who was a lawyer,. She was a thoughtful sensitive person, very much her own person. After meeting Rudolf Steiner she
played an important part in the Anthroposophical life in Holland.

Elisabeth Vreede came into contact with Theosophy in her home growing up. She was interested early on in the starry sky, & while learning French, she read the works of Camille Flammarion, a French astronomer & author. Because of his scientific background, he
approached Spiritism & reincarnation from the viewpoint of the scientific method, writing, “It is by the scientific method alone that we may make progress in the search for truth. Religious
belief must not take the place of impartial analysis. We must be constantly on
our guard against illusions.”

At the University of Leyden she studied mathematics, astronomy, Sanskrit, & philosophy (especially Hegel). She was also actively involved in student life, founding a boat club & was a council member of the students’ union.

The first meeting with Rudolf Steiner took place early on at the Theosophical Congress in London in 1903. Her parents were also theosophists. Rudolf Steiner made a huge impression on her. A year later at the Congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society at Amsterdam in 1904, she heard a lecture on ‘Mathematics & Occultism’ that Steiner gave. The next European Congress was in 1906, where Steiner held a cycle of 18 lectures.

After receiving her diploma in 1906, she gave instruction at a higher girl’s school in mathematics until 1910. Then she lived in Berlin, worked on her dissertation, while also working as a secretary for Rudolf Steiner. In April 1914, she moved to Dornach to help in the building of the first Goetheanum & was often found there carving wood.

During the War years (1916/17) Elisabeth Vreede broke off from her residence in Dornach in order to work in Berlin as a coworker of Elisabeth Rotten, a Quaker, peace activist & educational progressive, looking after prisoners of war. She was very much aware of the life & sufferings of her contemporaries.

After the War, Rudolf Steiner developed his idea of the threefold social order & she too had an intense interest in this initiative & work. She was the first to bring this idea of a threefold social order to England.

Around 1918, Dr. Vreede began to construct the library & archive at the Goetheanum. Using her own means, she purchased the expensive lecture transcripts as soon as they were typed from notes. In 1920 she moved to Arlesheim, Switzerland, where she had built a little house for herself. It was the second house for which Steiner had given the model in 1919.

In 1924, Steiner appointed her to head the Mathematical-Astronomical Section of the School of Spiritual Science of the recently reestablished Anthroposophical Society, as well as standing in the Vorstand of the general Anthroposophical Society from 1925 to 1935.

Rudolf Steiner saw her in connection with the Platonic stream, & had indicated that she had incarnated earlier than planned in order to meet him on Earth.

Dr. Vreede gave a lecture on 3 January 1926, which was first publish in the Anthroposophical Movement in Vol. 6, Nos. 42 to 46, called The World of the Stars and Human Destiny. In it she addressed the appropriate use of Astrology in our time:

“You will now understand to what purpose we have a horoscope, and that it is not there in the first instance for our own sake. You will understand that when a horoscope is made for a person’s satisfaction, there is always a certain amount of egoism connected with it; for he does not possess it for this purpose! And if you take the passages in our literature where Dr. Steiner speaks about Astrology (there are passages in many of the cycles and lectures) you will find how he emphasizes again and again that Astrology must be something social, which pays no attention to the individual but has social aims. In a true Astrology only what is universally human is considered and not the satisfaction of the egoism of the human being. By considering it egoistically, that deed of Michael is undone whereby other beings ought to be saved from plunging into the abyss.

When Dr. Steiner asked the position of the stars at the moment of a birth, it was always with reference to children who lacked one or other of the forces just described. It was then possible to learn from it which of these forces was not there in the right sense; thus it could be gathered what this human soul lacked before birth. And then it might be possible under certain circumstances to find a cure. Here we see how the matter is carried away from what is egoistic and into the social, when such abnormal children may in this way find a cure, which otherwise might perhaps not be possible. But in those children in whom certain forces were not brought in at birth these influences
remain present. …Thus we see how Astrology can be used when it is kept in Michael’s sense, and not in the sense in which it is so often practiced today.”

In 1928 she invited Willi Sucher to come to Dornach & collaborated with him in working out the death asterograms of historical personalities, which was part of his substantial historic research, & which he further worked out in the late 30’s & 40’s, doing the charts & therapeutic research of special needs children in England & Scotland.

In 1935 the separation within the Anthroposophical Society took place & she was expelled from the executive council, her section passed to other leadership. She was excluded, along with her long-time friend & co-member, Dr. Ita Wegman, from Vorstand. She was also cut off from the observatory & archives that she herself helped assemble.

Rudolf Steiner is reputed to have said that Dr. Vreede understood his work more deeply than anyone else.

On the anniversary, in 1943, of Rudolf Steiner’s death, she spoke to the circle of friends & co-workers at the Ida Wegman clinic. They wanted to commemorate not just Rudolf Steiner but the many others who were leading Anthroposophists but were no longer known to most. She spoke in a devoted way about Edith Maryon, who also died in 1924, & Alice Sauerwein. She portrayed Count Keyserlingk & Louis Werbeck, Caroline von Heydebrand & Eugen Kolisko.

At the beginning of May 1943 she spoke once more on the 400th anniversary of the death of Copernicus. At the lecture it was noticed that only by exceptional exertion could she keep herself upright. Just a few days later on 6 May, she had to take to her bed. She had never been ill nor depended on people until that point. Thanks to the devoted care of Frau Schunemann,
she was treated at home until her passing on 31 August 1943 in Ascona.

The Initiative to Rehabilitate Ita Wegman and Elisabeth Vreede was accomplished during the 2018 Annual General Meeting in Dornach. 75 years after her death.

The Spiritual Science of Rudolf Steiner has bequeathed to us a cosmology of Spirit which gives man once again a place within the world-picture and links Heaven and Earth together in unity.
~Elisabeth Vreede

“Fräulein Vreede,” said Rudolf Steiner, “is among those individuals who best understand my lectures.”

Sixty-six years after Elisabeth Vreede’s death, the Ita Wegman Institute published a monograph that bore witness to the greatness of her individuality, a greatness that was evident even when she was confronted their a tragic failure to understand her. The monograph contains many previously unpublished documents.

Rudolf Steiner once said of Elisabeth Vreede: Frl. Dr. Vreede is tirelessly active in bringing anthroposophy into the field of the mathematical sciences….She unites rigorous anthroposophical insight with an outstanding clarity about how anthroposophy should be brought into the various fields of knowledge.

http://www.rsarchive.org/RelAuthors/VreedeElizabeth/Anthro_Astro.php

Matthias Grünewald | John the Baptist (from the Isenheim Altarpiece) | MutualArt

See here the connections ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

Feast Day of Joseph of Arimathea & Nicodemus. Rudolf Steiner speaks about these individualities as initiates many times. Here are a few examples: http://www.rsarchive.org/Search.php http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA103/English/AP1962/19080525p01.html

1528 – Deathday of Matthias Grünewald a German Renaissance painter of religious works who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th century. Only ten paintings—several consisting of many panels—& thirty-five drawings survive, all religious, although many others were lost at sea in the Baltic on their way to Sweden as war booty. His largest and most famous work is the Isenheim Altarpiece

1740 – Birthday of Johann Friedrich Oberlin, mystic, philanthropist, social Christian. Rudolf Steiner spoke about him in his lectures on Occult History http://wn.rsarchive.org/GA/GA0126/19101227p01.html

1803 – Meriwether Lewis & William Clark start their expedition to the west

1869 – Deathday of Mary Ward, Irish astronomer & entomologist, killed when she fell under the wheels of an experimental steam car built by her cousins. She was the world’s first person known to be killed by a motor vehicle

1997 – Deathday of Diana, Princess of Wales, her companion Dodi Fayed & driver Henri Paul die in a car crash in Paris

With the Sun in my I
See me rise above the crescent Moon
To mingle with the seven stars
Our speaking –
Beyond mechanistic cyphers & spells that bind
A living conversation
Communicating the past & future into today
~hag

So are you coming?

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Join us at the Rudolf Steiner Branch in Chicago

1st make sure you are registered at https://www.anthroposophy.org/fallconference and have indicated that you will be attending in person at the RSBranch Chicago.
Then Register by October 1st with the Chicago Branch using PayPal (this requires that you have a PayPal account of your own).

Register and write a check and it mail by October 1st to: Rudolf Steiner Branch, Attn: Jenny Doty 4249 N Lincoln Ave. Chicago, IL 60618

Details for the in-person conference:

$75 will cover the expenses for facilities, 3 lunches and 3 dinners, snacks, and printing.

You will enjoy a pre-AGM dinner on Thursday Oct. 7 Doors open at 5 pm (AGM starts promptly at 6:3opm CT)
Lunch and Dinner on Fri.and Sat.
and Lunch post-conference on Sunday.
As well as Snacks/Coffee-Tea during the breaks.

$40 will cover only the bare expenses – no meals
Be a Master Builder Patron for $100 or more, to help pay for the tech costs!

Registration Link

For any other questions, please contact Jenny Doty at jenny.meyer17@gmail.com

Hey friends, Maybe you didn’t get this far in the post. If you did – Please help support the Anthroposophical Prison Outreach DANCE-A-THON 2021

Greetings kindred souls – This year for the APO fund raiser I plan to hold a Dance-A-Thon & Biodynamic Prep-stir on Friday 24 September 2021 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in America – Chicago

DJ’s TBA – It’s a potluck community gathering, so please bring food & drink to share – Along with your donation to this amazing program.

We also plan to read some poetry from some of the inmates who are working with Anthroposophy!

If you live out of town you can dance in your neck of the woods in solidarity with us. Please show your generous support…

Xox ~hag, hazel@reverseritual.com

Donate here https://secure.anthroposophy.org/…/anth…/campaign.jsp…

Festival Gathering: Tuesday 28 September on the eve of Michaelmas with Rev’s Jeana Lee & Victoria Capon

Potluck at 5:30
Talk at 7pm

At the Rudolf Steiner Branch, 4249 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago, IL 60618

Meeting The Dragon With Our Four Fold Being – A talk and collaborative sculptural creation

Bring Food & drink for the potluck & a found objects to help build the dragon!
Then our inspiration can come to life through our collaboration.

Jeana Lee was recently ordained as a priest of the Christian Community Movement for Religious Renewal and sent to the congregation in Chicago. Previously she taught chemistry and math at Green Meadow Waldorf high school. She enjoys swimming in the lake and is interested in questions of sin and redemption.

Victoria Capon hails from the east coast and is new to Chicago. Before attending seminary she taught at the Waldorf School of Cape Cod. Now she is happily settling into serving the chicago CC congregation and exploring the Windy City

Be-heading

August 29, 2021Celestial Event, Central Regional Council, History, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

~flood me with purpose & pleasure
submerge me in living water
give me music, a bright star & a listening heart
for i am liquid twilight
ready for thunder
in a big sky of waiting rain…
~hag

29 August 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Though the waning moon is gone from the early evening sky, she’s very much present from the middle of the night through dawn. Watch Bella Luna march across Taurus from Sunday through Tuesday mornings.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

“History, historical life, will only be seen in the right light when a true consciousness of the connection between the so-called living with the so-called dead can be developed” – The Living and the Dead by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, 5th February, 1918

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

33 – Beheading of John the Baptist

John the Baptist, truly the greatest of all Men – Still human, He hovers as an Eagle in the realm of the Angels. After his beheading He became the protector of the 12 disciples of Christ Jesus & especially of John the Evangelist.

Did the Eagle land in the beginning of the 20th century on the shoulder of Rudolf Steiner to guide us towards a deeper understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha?

“Elijah was destined to be one of the ruling figures in the régime inaugurated by Moses. There had to be Individualities who were not wholly contained in the human personality; one part of their being was in the earthly personality and the other in the spiritual world. Elijah was an Individuality of this nature. Only part of his being was present in his personality on the physical plane; the Ego-hood of Elijah could not penetrate fully into his physical body. He must therefore be called a personality ‘filled with the Spirit’. A figure such as Elijah could not possibly be brought into existence through the normal forces by which other men are placed in the world. In the normal way the human being develops in the mother’s body in such a way that through physical processes the Individuality who has been incarnated previously simply unites with the physical embryo. This could not be so in the case of an Individuality such as Elijah. Other forces had to intervene, concerned with the part of the Individuality that reached into the spiritual world. His development was necessarily attended by influences working upon him from outside. Hence when such Individualities are incarnated they appear as men who are ‘inspired’, ‘impelled by the Spirit’. They appear as ecstatic personalities whose utterances far surpass anything that might issue from their normal intelligence.

The man who lived as ‘Elijah’ was an outstanding example of this. The words uttered by his mouth and the actions performed by his hands did not proceed only from the part of his being actually present in his personality; they were manifestations of divine-spiritual Beings in the background.

When this Individuality was born again he was to unite with the body of the child born to Zacharias and Elisabeth. We know from the Gospel itself that John the Baptist is to be regarded as the reborn Elijah. But in him we have to do with an Individuality who in his earlier incarnations had not habitually developed or brought fully into operation all the forces present in the normal course of life. In the normal course of life the inner power or force of the Ego becomes active while the physical body of the human being is developing in the mother’s womb. The Elijah-Individuality in earlier times had not descended deeply enough to be involved in the inner processes operating here. The Ego had not, as in normal circumstances, been stirred into activity by its own forces, but from outside. This was now to happen again. But the Ego was now farther from the spiritual world and nearer to the Earth, much more closely connected with the Earth than the Beings who had formerly guided Elijah. The transition leading to the amalgamation of the Buddha-stream with the Zarathustra-stream was now to be brought about.

Everything was to be rejuvenated. Thus it was the Nirmanakaya of Buddha which now stirred the Ego-force of John into activity, having the same effect as spiritual forces that had formerly worked upon Elijah. At certain times the being known as Elijah had been rapt in states of ecstasy; then the God spoke, filling his Ego with a force which could be communicated to the outer world. Now again a spiritual force was present — the Nirmanakaya of Buddha hovering above the head of the Nathan Jesus; this force worked upon Elisabeth when John was to be born, stimulated within her the embryo of John in the sixth month of pregnancy, and wakened the Ego. But being nearer to the Earth this force now worked as more than an inspiration; it had an actual formative effect upon the Ego of John. Under the influence of the visit of her who is there called ‘Mary’, the Ego of John the Baptist awoke into activity. The Nirmanakaya of Buddha was here working upon the Ego of the former Elijah — now the Ego of John the Baptist — wakening it and penetrating right into the physical substance.” ~Rudolf Steiner, from The Gospel of St. Luke

“If we pass on to the sixth chapter of Mark we hear fully described how King Herod had John the Baptist beheaded. The tortured conscience of Herod arouses a strange foreboding in him. When he hears all that has occurred through Christ Jesus he says, “John, whom I beheaded, has been restored to life!” Herod feels that, though the physical personality of John had gone away, he is now all the more present! He feels that his atmosphere, his spirituality — which was none other than the spirituality of Elijah, is still there. His tormented conscience causes him to be aware that John the Baptist, that is, Elijah, is still there.

But then something strange happens. We are shown how, after John the Baptist had met his physical death, Christ Jesus came to the very neighborhood where John had worked. I want you to take particular notice of a remarkable passage and not to skim over it lightly, for the words of the Gospels are not written for rhetorical effect, nor journalistically. Something very significant is said here. Jesus Christ appears among the throng of followers and disciples of John the Baptist, and this fact is expressed in a sentence to which we must give careful attention: “And as Jesus came out He saw a great crowd,” by which could be meant only the disciples of John, “and He had compassion on them …” (Mark 6:34.) Why compassion? Because they had lost their master, they were there without John, whose headless corpse we are told had been carried to his grave. But even more precisely is it said, “for they were like sheep who had lost their shepherd. And He began to teach them many things.” It cannot be indicated any more clearly how He teaches John’s disciples. He teaches them because the spirit of Elijah, which is at the same time the spirit of John the Baptist, is still active among them. Thus it is again indicated with dramatic power in these significant passages of the Mark Gospel how the spirit of Christ Jesus entered into what had been prepared by the spirit of Elijah-John. Even so this is only one of the main points, around which many other significant things are grouped.

I will now call your attention to one thing more. I have several times pointed out how this spirit of Elijah or John continued to act in such a way as to impress its impulses into world history. I have often mentioned that the soul of Elijah-John appeared again in the painter Raphael. This is one of those facts that call attention to the metamorphoses of souls that take place under the impetus given by the Mystery of Golgotha. Because it was also necessary that in the post-Christian era such a soul should work in Raphael through the medium of a single personality; what in ancient times was so comprehensive and world encompassing now appears in such a different personality as that of Raphael. Can we not feel that the aura that hovered round Elijah-John is also present in Raphael? That in Raphael there were such similarities to these two others that we could even say that this element was too great to be able to enter into a single personality but hovered round it, so that the revelations received by this personality seemed like an illumination? Such was indeed the case with Raphael!” ~Rudolf Steiner, Gospel of Mark: Lecture 3

“The truth is, my dear friends, this earthly personality of Raphael was completely yielded up and was only present through what Lazarus-John gave to this soul to be poured out into colour and line for all mankind.

Such was the life of this being. And it was so, that this Raphael life could only be, as it were, absolved in another life of thirty years — in Novalis. And so we see Raphael die young, Novalis die young — one being, who came forth from Elijah-John, appearing before mankind in two different forms, preparing through art and through poetry the true Michael mood of soul, sent down by the Michael stream as messenger to men on Earth.

And now we behold the wonderful artistic power of Raphael come to life again in Novalis in poetry that stirs and enraptures the hearts of men. All that through Raphael was given to human eyes to see, — of this could human hearts drink deep, when it came again in self portrait of Novalis.

When we consider the life of Novalis, what an echo we find there of the Raphael life for which Hermann Grimm had so fine an understanding! His beloved dies in her youth. He is himself still young. What is he going to do with his life now that she has died? He tells us himself. He says that his life on Earth will be henceforth to “die after her”, to follow her on the way of death. He wants to pass over already now into the super-sensible, to lead again the Raphael life, not touching the Earth, but living out in poetry his magic idealism. He would fain not let himself be touched by Earth life.

When we read the “Fragments” of Novalis, and give ourselves up to the life that flows so abundantly in them, we can discover the secret of the deep impression they make on us. Whatever we have before us in immediate sense-reality, whatever the eye can see and recognise as beautiful — all this, through the magic idealism that lives in the soul of Novalis, appears in his poetry with a well-nigh heavenly splendour. The meanest and simplest material thing — with the magic idealism of his poetry he can make it live again in all its spiritual light and glory.

And so we see in Novalis a radiant and splendid forerunner of that Michael stream which is now to lead you all, my dear friends, while you live; and then, after you have gone through the gate of death, you will find in the spiritual super-sensible worlds all those others — among them also the being of whom I have been speaking to you today — all those with whom you are to prepare the work that shall be accomplished at the end of the century, and that shall lead mankind past the great crisis in which it is involved”. ~ The Last Address given by Rudolf Steiner The Individuality of Elias, John, Raphael, Novalis, Dornach, Michaelmas Eve, 1924

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated (with added titles) by Roy Sadler
AUTUMN PRELUDE II
The Ripening Of Self
v22
The light across the world’s expanse
lives on with inner power,
becomes the light of soul
and shines in depths of spirit
to liberate the fruits
that let the human Self to ripen
from Cosmic Self within the course of time.

This is the second verse of the Light Quartet:
its mirror verse in November is the third one.
ALL HALLOWTIDE II
The Ripening Of Creative Powers
v31
The light from spirit depths
strives outwards like the sun,
becomes life’s strength of will
and shines in senses’dullness
to free the forces
that ripen creative powers
in human work the soul initiates.

Greetings friends –Farmer John of Angelic Organics Farm has offered to donate the fresh biodynamic produce for the conference! – We just need a vegetarian chef who can work on site to make the meals. Contact jenny.meyer17@gmail.com

Join us at the Rudolf Steiner Branch in Chicago

1st make sure you are registered at https://www.anthroposophy.org/fallconference and have indicated that you will be attending in person at the RSBranch Chicago.
Then Register by October 1st with the Chicago Branch using PayPal (this requires that you have a PayPal account of your own).

Register and write a check and it mail by October 1st to: Rudolf Steiner Branch, Attn: Jenny Doty 4249 N Lincoln Ave. Chicago, IL 60618

Details for the in-person conference:

$75 will cover the expenses for facilities, 3 lunches and 3 dinners, snacks, and printing.

$40 will cover only the bare expenses – no meals
Be a Master Builder Patron for $100 or more, to help pay for the tech costs!

Registration Link

For any other questions, please contact Jenny Doty at jenny.meyer17@gmail.com

Hey friends, You know I never ask for $ – so you know this has got to be an important request: Please help support the Anthroposophical Prison Outreach DANCE-A-THON 2021

DJ’s TBA – It’s a potluck community gathering, so please bring food & drink to share – Along with your donation to this amazing program.

We also plan to read some poetry from some of the inmates who are working with Anthroposophy!

If you live out of town you can dance in your neck of the woods in solidarity with us. Please show your generous support…

Xox ~hag, hazel@reverseritual.com

Donate here https://secure.anthroposophy.org/…/anth…/campaign.jsp…

Festival Gathering: Tuesday 28 September on the eve of Michaelmas with Rev’s Jeana Lee & Victoria Capon

Potluck at 5:30
Talk at 7pm

At the Rudolf Steiner Branch, 4249 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago, IL 60618

Meeting The Dragon With Our Four Fold Being – A talk and collaborative sculptural creation

Bring Food & drink for the potluck & a found objects to help build the dragon!
Then our inspiration can come to life through our collaboration.

Join the Crew

August 28, 2021Central Regional Council, Chicago Event, History, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

Greetings friends – The divine architect has laid the plans, the draftsmen are hard at work. The builders have honed their tools. All the scaffolding is in place. The 1st draft of the pageant is written; the hunt for mana is ongoing; the space is being sanctified – All that is left is for you to join the quest.

And so it is that we enthusiastically invite you to join us at the Rudolf Steiner Branch in Chicago – one of 6 “HUBS” that will co-lead the conference content with the Central Regional Council. We are also a ‘Hybrid-Host’ where attendees will gather in-person. When you come to Chicago for the AGM, you will experience a conference that is a mix of projected Zoom presentations, in-person small group work, artistic activities, and catered vegetarian meals.

1st make sure you are registered at https://www.anthroposophy.org/fallconference and have indicated that you will be attending in person at the RSBranch Chicago.
Then Register by October 1st with the Chicago Branch using PayPal (this requires that you have a PayPal account of your own).

Register and write a check and it mail by October 1st to: Rudolf Steiner Branch, Attn: Jenny Doty 4249 N Lincoln Ave. Chicago, IL 60618

Details for the in-person conference:

$75 will cover the expenses for facilities, 3 lunches and 3 dinners, snacks, and printing.

$40 will cover only the bare expenses – no meals
Be a Master Builder Patron for $100 or more, to help pay for the tech costs!

Registration Link

Free street parking is available on the side streets near the Branch, requiring a few-block walk to the conference.
The nearest public transportation can be found here https://www.transitchicago.com/planatrip/
If you opt-out of meals, you may contact jenny.meyer17@gmail.com for a list of restaurants within walking distance (bear in mind time restraints) or bring your own food (that doesn’t require refrigeration or kitchen usage).
There are 3 bathrooms available at the Branch.
If you need lodging, consider using AirBnb.com, Vrbo.com, or a nearby hotel. Contact Jenny if you have an interest in finding someone that would allow you to couch-surf or share an AirBnB.
Be prepared to participate in the group work of Biography, Eurythmy, Singing, and Speech as well as being part of the Experiential Pageant—the culmination of the conference on Sunday 10 October.
Bring your open heart and community spirit!

For any other questions, please contact Jenny Doty at jenny.meyer17@gmail.com.

Today 28 August 1749 – Birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German author, poet, playwright, scientist & diplomat. In 1888, as a result of his work for the Kürschner edition of Goethe’s works, Rudolf Steiner was invited to work as an editor at the Goethe archives in Weimar. As well as the introductions & commentaries to 4 volumes of Goethe’s scientific writings, Steiner wrote 2 books about Goethe’s philosophy: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World-Conception (1886), which Steiner regarded as the epistemological foundation & justification for his later work, & Goethe’s Conception of the World (1897). Steiner writes about Goethe in many of his lectures, including commentaries on his play Faust.

Goethe and the Evolution of Consciousness, by Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, August 19th, 1921

“…As a young man Goethe necessarily grew up in the outlook of his contemporaries and in the way in which they regarded the world and the affairs of human beings. But he really did not feel at home in this world of thought. There was something turbulent about the young Goethe, but it was a turbulence of a special kind. We need only look at the poems he composed in his youth and we shall find that there was always a kind of inner opposition to what his contemporaries were thinking about the world and about life.

But at the same time there is something else in Goethe — a kind of appeal to what lives in Nature, saying something more enduring and conveying much more than the opinions of those around him could convey. Goethe appeals to the revelations of Nature rather than to the revelations of the human mind. And this was the real temper of his soul even when he was still a child, when he was studying at Leipzig, Strassburg and Frankfurt, and for the first period of his life at Weimar.

Think of him as a child with all the religious convictions of his contemporaries around him. He himself relates — and I have often drawn attention to this beautiful episode in Goethe’s early life — how as a boy of seven he built an altar by taking a music-stand and laying upon it specimens of minerals from his father’s collection; how he placed a taper on the top, lighting it by using a burning-glass to catch the rays of the sun, in order, as he says later — for at seven years he would not, of course, have spoken in this way — to bring an offering to the great God of Nature.

We see him growing beyond what those around him have to say, coming into a closer union with Nature, in whose arms he first of all seeks refuge. Read the works written by Goethe in his youth and you will find that they reveal just this attitude of mind. Then a great longing to go to Italy seizes him and his whole outlook changes in a most remarkable way.

We shall never understand Goethe unless we bear in mind the overwhelming change that came upon him in Italy. In letters to friends at Weimar he speaks of the works of art which conjure up before his soul the whole way in which the Greeks worked. He says: “I suspect that the Greeks proceeded according to those laws by which Nature herself proceeds, and of which I am on the track.” — At last Goethe is satisfied with an environment, an artistic environment enfilled with ideas much closer to Nature than those around him in his youth. And we see how in the course of his Italian journey the idea of metamorphosis arises from this mood of soul, how in Italy Goethe begins to see the transformation of leaf into petal in such a way that the thought of metamorphosis in the whole of Nature flashes up within him.

It is only now that Goethe finds a world in which his soul really feels at home. And, if we study all that he produced after that time, both as a poet and a scientist, it is borne in upon us that he was now living in a world of thought not easily intelligible to his contemporaries, nor indeed to the man of to-day.

Those who embark upon a study of Goethe equipped with the modern scholarship acquired in every kind of educational institution from the Elementary School to the University, and with habitual thought and outlook, will never understand him. For an inner change of mental outlook is essential if we are to realise what Goethe really had in his mind when, in Italy, he re-wrote Iphigenia in Greek metre, after having first composed it in the mood of the Germanic North. Nor is it possible to understand Goethe’s whole attitude to Faust until we realise the fundamental nature of the change that had taken place.

After he had been to Italy, Goethe really hated the first version of Faust which he had written earlier. After that journey he would never have been able to write the passage where Faust turns away from the

“… heavenly forces rising and descending, Their golden urns reciprocally lending,” where he turns his back upon the macrocosm, crying: “Thou, Spirit of the Earth art nearer to me.”

…And many other passages can be read in the same sense. Take, for instance, that wonderful treatise written in the year 1790, on the Metamorphosis of the Plants (Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erkennen). We shall have to admit that before his journey to Italy Goethe could never have had at his command a language which seems to converse with the very growth and unfolding life of the plants. And this is an eloquent indication of the place of Goethe’s soul in the whole sweep of evolution. Goethe felt a stranger to the thought of his time the moment he was obliged inwardly to ‘digest’ the result of contemporary scientific education. He was always striving for a different kind of thinking, a different way of approaching the world, and he found it when he felt that he had brought to life within him the attitude of the Greeks to Nature, to the World, to Man…” http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19210819p01.html

Goethe & he metamorphosis of plants ~André Aimé René Masson

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

“What is to be the starting force and impulse for events in social and ethical life must come out of the spiritual world.” Rudolf Steiner, New Spiritual Impulses in History” Dornach 16 December, 1917

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

430 – Deathday of Saint Augustine an early Christian theologian & philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western philosophy. Among his most important works are The City of God & Confessions. In his early years, he was heavily influenced by Manichaeism & afterward by the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus. He “established anew the ancient Faith.” After his conversion to Christianity in 387, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy & theology, believing that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom. He is the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, the alleviation of sore eyes.

“…St. Augustine came to acquire that true Certainty subject to absolutely no deception, which can only he acquired by man with reference to what he experiences in his inner soul…One can believe that everything else the world says is subject to deception, but one cannot possibly doubt that what one experiences in one’s inner being, as one’s ideas and feelings, is the truth; that is certain. That firm basis for the admittance of an indisputable truth, formed one of the starting-points of the Augustinian philosophy...” ~St. Augustine, St. Simon and Auguste Comte, By Rudolf Steiner, GA 184

listen
to the bees
listen to the workers
listen to the sweet hive of your heart
~hag

Hey friends, You know I never ask for $ – so you know this has got to be an important request: Please help support the Anthroposophical Prison Outreach DANCE-A-THON 2021

DJ’s TBA – It’s a potluck community gathering, so please bring food & drink to share – Along with your donation to this amazing program.

We also plan to read some poetry from some of the inmates who are working with Anthroposophy!

If you live out of town you can dance in your neck of the woods in solidarity with us. Please show your generous support…

Xox ~hag, hazel@reverseritual.com

Donate here https://secure.anthroposophy.org/…/anth…/campaign.jsp…

Festival Gathering: Tuesday 28 September on the eve of Michaelmas with Rev’s Jeana Lee & Victoria Capon

Potluck at 5:30
Talk at 7pm

At the Rudolf Steiner Branch, 4249 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago, IL 60618

Meeting The Dragon With Our Four Fold Being – A talk and collaborative sculptural creation

Bring Food & drink for the potluck & a found objects to help build the dragon!
Then our inspiration can come to life through our collaboration.

It’s Our Turn

August 27, 2021Celestial Event, History, Insight, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

“Love is the result of wisdom reborn in the “I”. ~Rudolf Steiner

After working the path of the New Mysteries of Spiritual Science we are called to apply ourselves, & take the responsible steps of inner development from out of our own “I”. There is no guru, no dogma to follow. In the old mysteries one had to wait to be asked; now we must let wisdom give birth to love – which allows us to be guided by the Christic impulse within.

When we have cultivated with Anthroposophia the fruits of imaginative thinking, inspirational feeling, & intuitive willing, we come to realize that it is our duty to contribute something to the spiritual development of the future. This is the essential core of the New Mysteries.

If we can get passed the anti-social qualities of this consciousness soul age, we realize that the moment has arrived for us to give back to the Spiritual World. Just as the hierarchies bestowed on us their being substance for the evolution of humankind, so must we awaken in our “I” to participate in the work of further evolution – or not – we can be like the backward beings who have chosen to stay behind.

Michael as our Time Spirit is silent. He is awaiting what we will offer; He wills. In the future, worlds have to be built with human will, from our willing sacrifice – a dedication to offering up our higher Self for the Good of All – so that our Earth can become a Cosmos of Love – a development that leads from Wisdom to love thru the “I”.

~hag

27 August 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Week by week Jupiter and Saturn come into view ever higher in twilight.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” ~George Orwell

348 – Ulfilas devised the Gothic alphabet & translated the Bible from Greek into the Gothic language

410 – The sacking of Rome by the Visigoths ends after three days

1730 – Birthday of Johann Georg Hamann, ‘the Magnus of the North –A German philosopher, whose work was used by his student J. G. Herder as a main support of the Sturm und Drang movement. Goethe & Kierkegaard considered him to be the finest mind of his time

1770 – Birthday of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German philosopher of “absolute idealism” described a “Protestant Aquinas – the originator of the thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad along with Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Hegel has influenced many thinkers & writers- the philosophies of Marx & Nietzsche, phenomenology, German existentialism, & psychoanalysis

1813 – French Emperor Napoleon I defeats a larger force of Austrians, Russians, & Prussians at the Battle of Dresden

1832 – Black Hawk, leader of the Sauk tribe of Native Americans, surrenders to U.S. authorities, ending the Black Hawk War

1859 – Petroleum is discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania leading to the world’s first commercially successful oil well

1881 – The Georgia hurricane makes landfall near Savannah, Georgia, resulting in an estimated 700 deaths

1883 – Eruption of Krakatoa: Four enormous explosions destroy the island of Krakatoa & cause years of climate change

1893 – The Sea Islands hurricane strikes the United States near Savannah, Georgia, killing an estimated 1,000-2,000 people

1916 – The Kingdom of Romania declares war on Austria-Hungary, entering World War I as one of the Allied nations

1924 – Introduction of the Michael sign by Rudolf Steiner after a breach of the mantras from the 1^st Class of the School of Spiritual Science in London

1942 – Sarny Massacre – the execution of 18,000 people mostly Jews, in the Nazi-occupied city of Sarny, then part of Poland, on August 27 – 28, 1942

1962 – The Mariner 2 unmanned space mission is launched to Venus by NASA

1963 – Deathday of W. E. B. Du Bois, American sociologist, historian, & activist

1975 – Deathday of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974, and the key figure of Rastafari, a religious movement in Jamaica. He was a member of the Solomonic dynasty who traced his lineage to Emperor Menelik I, the son of King Solomon and Makeda the Queen of Sheba. Haile Selassie attempted to modernize the country through a series of political and social reforms, including the introduction of Ethiopia’s first written constitution and the abolition of slavery. He led the failed efforts to defend Ethiopia during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and spent the period of Italian occupation in exile in England. He returned to lead Ethiopia in 1941 after the British Empire defeated the Italian occupiers in the East African campaign. His internationalist views led to Ethiopia becoming a charter member of the United Nations. In 1963, he presided over the formation of the Organisation of African Unity, the precursor of the African Union, and served as its first chairman. He was overthrown in a 1974 military coup by a Marxist-Leninist junta, the Derg. Selassie was murdered by the junta on 27 August 1975. Among some members of the Rastafari movement, Haile Selassie is referred to as the returned messiah of the Bible, God incarnate. This distinction notwithstanding, Haile Selassie was a Christian and adhered to the tenets and liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox church.

1991 – Moldova declares independence from the USSR

2003 – Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years

2011 – Hurricane Irene strikes the United States east coast, killing 77 & causing an estimated $15.6 billion in damage

~Ahh
The intrigue of beauty in decay…
The columns of the temple in ruin
The lilies shriveled & stinking with rot
The repulsion of the slaughter house
Awakens the study of my Self
In the silence of time
Without space…
~hag

HAZEL’S APO DANCE-A-THON 2021

Greetings kindred souls – This year for the Anthroposophical Prison Outreach fund raiser I plan to hold a Dance-A-Thon & Biodynamic Prep-stir on Friday 24 September 2021 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in America – Chicago

DJ’s TBA – It’s a potluck community gathering, so please bring food & drink to share – Along with your donation to this amazing program.

We also plan to read some poetry from some of the inmates who are working with Anthroposophy!

If you live out of town you can dance in your neck of the woods in solidarity with us. Please show your generous support…

Xox ~hag, hazel@reverseritual.com

Donate here https://secure.anthroposophy.org/…/anth…/campaign.jsp…

Festival Gathering: Tuesday 28 September on the eve of Michaelmas with Rev’s Jeana Lee & Victoria Capon

Potluck at 5:30
Talk at 7pm

At the Rudolf Steiner Branch, 4249 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago, IL 60618

Meeting The Dragon With Our Four Fold Being – A talk and collaborative sculptural creation

Bring Food & drink for the potluck & a found objects to help build the dragon!
Then our inspiration can come to life through our collaboration.

Join us online or in-person to further explore the 6BE – October 7-10, 2021 for ‘Building the Temple of the Heart’, the ASA AGM & Conference co-sponsored by the Central Regional Council.

Art Portal

August 26, 2021History, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

TODAY 26 August in 1498 – Michelangelo is commissioned to carve the Pietà

“In Michelangelo we have a spirit who helped human evolution on its way because he had a maturity of soul which enabled him to imprint on the world of space and matter significant facts from the spiritual world. He stood wholly in the great current of his times yet his own inmost quality was not fully understood. A friend once wrote to him that even the Pope feared him; and yet in his soul there lived all the greatness of Christian impulses which flowed into his work. While he felt himself at one with the great Christian impulses he yet lived at the dawn of a later epoch — closely though it was still connected with earlier ages. The content of older Christian impulses still affected his soul and out of that he created something which in its form and artistic method was already part of the ties in which we ourselves live. Hence comes the mood of the poem which he wrote — probably during his last days as he looked back over his life — and which makes it clear what our relation is to him, and how we should allow his influence over us to work:

Now hath my life across a stormy sea like a frail barque reached that wide port, where all are hidden, ere the final reckoning fall of good and evil for eternity.

Now know I well how that fond phantasy, which made my soul the worshipper and thrall of earthly art, is vain; how criminal is that which all men seek unwillingly.

Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly dressed, what are they when the double death is nigh?

The one I know for sure, the other dread.

Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest my soul that turns to His great Love on high Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread. ~ Michelangelo

Michelangelo was a great poet also, and the poems of his which survive show the same spirit which we have found in his sculpture and painting. The last three lines of this sonnet make it clear that he could never be at ease in the world, and that was fundamentally true of him all his life. He was a sort of hybrid, still part of the old but already living within the new. This is particularly evident in that work which he carried out at the instigation of one of the Popes: the tombs of Giuliani and Lorenzo dei Medici.

In this chapel: the four allegorical figures, arranged two and two: Day and Night, Dawn and Dusk. I have often gazed at them; in fact they are one of the things which by a sort of spiritual compulsion I always look at longest when I have had the privilege of being in Florence. These figures are not mere allegories without force and without vitality. Use every means that Spiritual Science gives you to look at them and think about them; then if we remember that what anthroposophy calls the ego and the astral body leave the physical and etheric bodies at night, and if we ask ourselves what qualities and gesture of the etheric body we should select to represent plastically the truth which Spiritual Science tells us — how, that is, we should picture the physical body of the sleeping human being if we really feel him to be what Spiritual Science describes him as being — we know that he should be represented in the form which Michelangelo has given to “Night”. It is not just a symbol of night but the true spiritual reality of man as he really is in sleep which we have before us in this female figure. Thus Michelangelo, who knew so well how to set the figures in his works within the same space in which we ourselves stand, was also well aware what it means if the soul and spirit leaves man’s physical body but leave it with life still within it. If we also study the other individual members of the human being and then look at the other figures in the tomb, we shall see how closely they run parallel with what I once called spiritual chemistry.” ~Rudolf Steiner, Michelangelo, Berlin, 8th January, 1914

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

“To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world.” Rudolf Steiner

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Women’s Equality Day

Feast day of Samuel, literally meaning “Name of God” in Hebrew, is a leader & Judge of ancient Israel. He is also known as a prophet & is mentioned in the second chapter of the Qur’an. Aa a seer, Samuel is associated with the bands of musical ecstatic roaming prophets.

Feast Day of Melchizedek, (“God most high”) Priest & king of Salem mentioned in the 14th chapter of the Book of Genesis. He brings out bread and wine & blesses Abram. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, he is depicted as being “Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life.” Jesus Christ is identified as “a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek”

“Even when some individual was to be the leader of a particular people he would be required to develop a measure of understanding for every human soul. This is indicated magnificently in the Old Testament in the passage describing the meeting between Abraham and Melchizedek, the priest of the Most High. Those who understand this passage know that Abraham, who was destined to become the leader of his people, underwent an Initiation at this time — even if not in full consciousness as is the case in later Initiations. Abraham’s Initiation was connected with realisation of the Divine element that can flow into all human souls. The passage which tells of the meeting of Abraham with Melchizedek contains a deep secret connected with the evolution of humanity. “~Rudolf Steiner, Between Death & Rebirth, Lecture 2

Feast Day of The Black Madonna of Częstochowa, The Virgin Mary is shown as the “Hodegetria” (“One Who Shows the Way“)The icon has been intimately associated with Poland for the past 600 years.

Its history prior to its arrival in Poland is shrouded in numerous legends which trace the icon’s origin to St. Luke who painted it on a cedar table top from the house of the Holy Family.

The same legend holds that the painting was discovered in Jerusalem in 326 by St. Helena, who brought it back to Constantinople & presented it to her son, Constantine the Great.

The legend concerning the two scars on the Black Madonna’s right cheek is that the Hussites stormed the Pauline monastery in 1430, plundering the sanctuary. Among the items stolen was the icon. After putting it in their wagon, the Hussites tried to get away but their horses refused to move. They threw the portrait down to the ground, as the robber struck the painting twice, the face of the Virgin Mary started to bleed; in a panic, the scared Hussites retreated & left the painting

1789 – The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is approved- directly influenced by Thomas Jefferson, working with General Lafayette. Also by the doctrine of “natural right“, held to be universal: valid at all times & in every place, pertaining to human nature itself. It became the basis for a nation of free individuals protected equally by law. Inspired in part by the American Revolution, & also by the Enlightenment philosophers, the Declaration was a core statement of the values of the French Revolution & had a major impact on the development of freedom & democracy in Europe & worldwide

1791 – John Fitch is granted a United States patent for the steamboat

1795 – Deathday of Cagliostro, the alias of the occultist Giuseppe Balsamo, an Italian adventurer & self-styled magician. He became a glamorous figure associated with the royal courts of Europe where he pursued various occult arts, including psychic healing, alchemy & scrying. His reputation lingered for many decades after his death. Steiner called him an initiate.

1883 – Eruption of Krakatoa

1910 – Birthday of Mother Teresa

1914 – Rudolf Steiner meets Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the German General Staff, near Koblenz

19th Amendment — History of U.S. Woman's Suffrage

1920 – The 19th amendment to United States Constitution takes effect, giving women the right to vote

1942 – The Holocaust in Chortkiv, western Ukraine, over 4000 die

A Brief History of Women's Liberation Movements in America ‹ Literary Hub

1970 – The feminist movement, led by Betty Friedan, leads a nationwide Women’s Strike for Equality

1995 – Deathday of Daskalos, the Greek word for teacher, a Greek Cypriot mystic & healer. He set up the circle, “The Researchers of Truth.”

1999 – Russia begins the Second Chechen War

5 Trailblazing Women's Equality Activists You Should Know - Goodnet

~Before I was dust
A fine powder of thought
Settling over the brown feet of women,
I was
Zagging in the lightning
Well-spoken in the thunder
Heavy in air I breathe today
~hag

HAZEL’S APO DANCE-A-THON 2021

DJ’s TBA – It’s a potluck community gathering, so please bring food & drink to share – Along with your donation to this amazing program.

We also plan to read some poetry from some of the inmates who are working with Anthroposophy!

If you live out of town you can dance in your neck of the woods in solidarity with us. Please show your generous support…

Xox ~hag, hazel@reverseritual.com

Donate here https://secure.anthroposophy.org/…/anth…/campaign.jsp…

Festival Gathering: Tuesday 28 September on the eve of Michaelmas with Rev’s Jeana Lee & Victoria Capon

Potluck at 5:30
Talk at 7pm

At the Rudolf Steiner Branch, 4249 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago, IL 60618

Meeting The Dragon With Our Four Fold Being – A talk and collaborative sculptural creation

Bring Food & drink for the potluck & a found objects to help build the dragon!
Then our inspiration can come to life through our collaboration.

Join us online or in-person to further explore the 6BE – October 7-10, 2021 for ‘Building the Temple of the Heart’, the ASA AGM & Conference co-sponsored by the Central Regional Council.

Cognitive Ritual

~Confessions of a Modern Rosicrucian

Monthly Archives: August 2021

Vreede’s Star

Be-heading

Join the Crew

It’s Our Turn

Art Portal

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