Daily Archives: February 12, 2023

You in Me

Dear friends – What is the essence of the New Mysteries of initiation? – Where do we meet the tasks & challenges on this modern path of evolution?

We often find our most profound trials in the Social Realm – It is with each other that we are tested – We must learn to work & grow together, creating safe sacred spaces where we can meet “I” to “I”.

There are of course conditions that depend on us doing our own personal inner work, & a selfless desire to met the other in good will. Our hearts & minds must be on fire with a balanced enthusiasm for a true creative becoming, which inspires us to mutually support, empower, awaken, & stimulate each other. This means that as participants in this fluid, independent, karmic school, we have to develop forces of love & trust, by 1st of all truly knowing ourselves, & then working to know each other, seeking to understand why destiny has brought us together.

We are meant to cultivate totally new kinds of spiritual forces that generate resolve, strengthening our thinking, because we will be tested daily – The adversarial powers work very hard to prick & divide us.

It is part of our task in this Michaelic school of life on earth where we meet our initiators in every relationship, to experience consciously the fact that especially in our anthroposophical communities where profound ideals have an opportunity to flourish, these adversarial forces are ever lurking – specifically in each of our soul forces – working to turn idealistic love into mutual hatred, trust into fractional mistrust – hope into despair.

Only thru a lifelong willingness to cross this deep abyss, together, in positivity, with a courageous vulnerability – to repeatedly create a new & robust kind of mutual love, trust, & abiding loyalty – uplifting sisterly-&-brotherly care, can we hope to make progress.

And this mutually suffered, joyfully harvested & actualized love shores up the Foundation Stone of our future orientated Independent School of Spiritual Science that we are meant to co-create.

I seek to hold this ideal even when I know I am not meeting it because of my feelings of pain & discomfort at my own moral failings which keep me separate. Sometimes I need boundaries. And so I do the work of weaving a tender fence of protection around the garden of my soul – So that I can ‘Awaken to Community’ in a more upright way…And so it is today…   

~hag

12 Friday 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Asteroid 2 Pallas reaches its stationary point amid the background stars in Canis Major, rising in the southeast at sunset. A few hours later, Pallas is high in the south, to the lower right of the blazing luminary Sirius, the Dog Star.

THE CALENDAR OF THE SOUL translated – with added titles – by Roy Sadler
CARNIVAL Illuminate v45
In concert with the spirit’s birth
the mind grows firm;
it lifts the senses’ vague allure
to perfect clarity.
When soul abundance
would bond with springlife’s coming,
the mind must shine its light
on sense revealing.

Its mirror verse is at Pentecost (Whitsun, White Sunday) the octave of Easter,
as this week’s is the octave of Christmas, which is why I begin both verses
not simply as ‘United with’ but ‘In concert with’.

WHITSUN
Dream
v8

In concert with the gods’ creating
the senses’ power grows;
it presses thinking down
to dimness of a dream.
When Holy Being
would bond with soul
the mind must rest,
in dreamlike presence satisfied.

~Sea Cooke

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1804 – Death day of Immanuel Kant, German anthropologist, philosopher, & academic. “…all that the Critique of Pure Reason attempts to show can be summed up as follows: Mathematics and pure natural science are a priori sciences; from this it follows that the form of all experiences must be inherent in the subject itself. Therefore, the only thing left that is empirically given is the material of sensations. This is built up into a system of experiences, the form of which is inherent in the subject. The formal truths of a priori theories have meaning and significance only as principles which regulate the material of sensation; they make experience possible, but do not go further than experience. However, these formal truths are the synthetical judgment a priori, and they must — as condition necessary for experience — extend as far as experience itself. The Critique of Pure Reason does not at all prove that mathematics and pure science are a priori sciences but only establishes their sphere of validity, pre-supposing that their truths are acquired independently of experience. Kant, in fact, avoids discussing the question of proof of the a priori sciences in that he simply excludes that section of mathematics where even in his own opinion the a priori nature is open to doubt; and he limits himself to that section where he believes proof can be inferred from the concepts alone.” ~Rudolf Steiner, Truth and Knowledge: Kant’s Basic Epistemological Question

1809 – Birthday of Charles Darwin, English geologist & theorist. “…Arabism spreads abroad in the spiritual life. And along this undercurrent of history, Tarik bears what he originally bore into Spain on the fierce wings of war. The aim of the Arabians in their campaigns was most certainly not that of mere slaughter; no, their aim was really the spread of Arabism. Their tasks were connected with culture. And what a Tarik had carried into Spain at the beginning of the 8th century, he now bears with him through the gate of death, experiencing how as far as external history is concerned it runs dry in Western Europe. And he appears again in the 19th century, bringing Arabism to expression in modern form, as Charles Darwin.

Suddenly we shall find a light shed upon something that seems to come like a bolt from the blue — we find a light shed upon it when we follow what has here been carried over from an earlier into a later time, appearing in an entirely different form.

It may at first seem like a paradox, but the paradox will disappear the more deeply we look into the concrete facts. Read Darwin’s writings again with perception sharpened by what has been said and you will feel: Darwin writes about things which Tarik might have been able to see on his way to Europe! — In such details you will perceive how the one life reaches over into the next.” ~Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies – Volume I, lecture 10

1809 – Birthday of Abraham Lincoln, American lawyer & politician, 16th President of the United States

The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction…
Is there a path to expansion…..?

PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA

Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to understand Aristotle’s gift to humanity – his Categories? Let us explore a path to an experience supported by Eurythmy.

Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm – Purchase tickets at the door or pay online
$12

Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am – 12 noon CT– Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society
4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
https://www.rschicago.org/happenings/calendar 
www.rschicago.org/donate

For more info contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.

The Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Resurrection

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg,

Insights about Mary Magdalene with Faith DiVecchio

Song-Circle with Velsum, 

Eurythmy – & an artistic break out session

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT hybrid event in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & on zoom

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
www.rschicago.org/donate

PRESENTS:

The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it. Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll

Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance

Gerald Shepherd

When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.

Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.

This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.

Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.

Nancy Poer

~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor 

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy

Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom

We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.

Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83663366670?pwd=L292UzlOR1pkZjBXSWpxK1B2b0o1dz09 Meeting ID: 836 6336 6670 / Passcode: 397593

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
*Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (mapwww.rschicago.org/donate