“It has been said that we are the ones who forge the sword of Michael. However, there is something more to it. It has to do with the reality in the hidden world that, what needs to be prepared as the sword of Michael needs to be carried out on an altar, which cannot be seen externally. This altar is located under the Earth, underground, really. The understanding of nature powers leads to the understanding that the sword of Michael needs to be forged on an altar which is underground. There it needs to be found by receptive souls. The main thing is that you contribute by helping so that more and more souls find the sword of Michael. And it is not enough that it is forged. The task is only completed when the sword is found...”~Rudolf Steiner (GA 217A The Task of Enlightenment of Youth, Address in Koberwitz, June 17, 1924)
Our modern Grail Quest demands that we develop heart-thinking to unlock the secrets of the elemental forces – allowing us to forge the Earth into an altar. Our spiritual work is to find our delicate organ of human conscience, ‘piercing through the veil’ like Parzival, to find & consecrate the sword of benediction – cutting thru the wastelands to heal the wounded Fischer King within.
The quest is always a question. Can we stand & remain steadfast on our journey – unfolding our higher ego-forces in the midst of a cynical one-sided intellectual culture that remains present in ourselves & in our companions on this spiritual journey—a continual giving & receiving of the sword which wounds as well as blesses?
The path that Parzival opened for us will never be achieved by adhering to outer authorities. The Parzival in us blazes a unique path through trial & error, an ever questing for the development of our individual ego forces. The point of the quest is to tear down the old paradigms to discover our own inner authority & follow that path even into the darkness of the underworld, where will we take up the sword as Michaelic warriors, for Freedom & Love.
~hag
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
680 – The 6th Ecumenical Council commences in Constantinople
1492 – The Ensisheim meteorite, the oldest meteorite with a known date of impact, strikes the Earth around noon in a wheat field outside the village of Ensisheim, Alsace, France
1665 – The London Gazette, the oldest surviving journal, is first published
1775 – Goethe arrives in Weimar
1775 – John Murray, the Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia, starts the first mass emancipation of slaves in North America by issuing Lord Dunmore’s Offer of Emancipation, which offers freedom to slaves who abandoned their colonial masters to fight with Murray and the British
1837 – Death-day of Elijah Parish Lovejoy an American Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper editor & abolitionist. He was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois.
1867 – Birthday of Marie Curie, Polish chemist & physicist, Nobel Prize laureate winner
1870- Papal Infallibility is proclaimed by Pius IX
1879 – Birthday of Leon Trotsky, Russian theorist & politician, founded the Red Army. Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks just before the 1917 October Revolution, immediately becoming a leader within the Communist Party. He would go on to become one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution
1893 – Women in the U.S. state of Colorado are granted the right to vote, the second state to do so
1913 – Birthday of Albert Camus, a French philosopher, author, & journalist. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay The Rebel that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957
1922 – The Order of the Freemason’s official ‘condemnation’ of Rudolf Steiner
1944 – Franklin D. Roosevelt elected for a record fourth term as President of the United States of America
1962 – Death-day of Eleanor Roosevelt, American humanitarian 39th First Lady of the United States
‘Tuning to the Stars’: Eurythmy for the Holy Nights with Jan Ranck* –
Sacred Geometry, the Planets and the Zodiac
LIVE IN-PERSON 26-30 Dec. 2021 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4 pm – 5 pm
And at 8pm on 31 Dec. as part of our annual NYE Conscious Community Gathering (details TBA)
$100 for all 6 sessions, or $22 for each individual session.
Make your payment using PayPal
or QuickPay with Zelle to chase@rschicago.org
(please indicate in the notes that it is for the Holy Nights Eurythmy)
Cash at the door, or send a check to:
Rudolf Steiner Branch
4249 North Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, IL 60618-2953
USA
For more info. Contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg hag@RSchicago.org
* Jan Ranck – Born in the USA, Jan Ranck studied music and comparative arts at Indiana University in Bloomington. She accompanied the London Stage Group on their 1976 USA tour and went on to study eurythmy at the Eurythmeum in Dornach with Lea van der Pals, where she subsequently taught. In 1984 she joined the faculty of The London School of Eurythmy. She left there to complete her eurythmy therapy training in Stuttgart in 1989, moving afterward to Israel, where she founded and directed the Jerusalem Eurythmy Ensemble (1990) and the Jerusalem Academy of Eurythmy (1992) and was an instructor in the Jerusalem Waldorf Teacher Bachelor Program in David Yellin Academic College from 1999. Jan has held Master Classes at various venues worldwide, including the Goetheanum and the MA Program in Eurythmy held at Emerson College and Spring Valley. She is the representative for Israel in the International Eurythmy Therapy Forum.
