Monthly Archives: February 2023

Toward Freedoms Mind

February 18, 2023Community, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Upcoming Events~hag

~The Star gate is freshly oiled
Cutting a way
Thru Mystery
Reverberating & repeating my swelling heart
With high notes of intention
& the will toward freedoms mind…
~hag

18 February 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: What’s that dazzling scene in the west after sunset? It’s the Venus and Jupiter conjunction! They’ll be closest around March 1, 2023

Image result for change your habits painting — Rekha Rodwittiya

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

TODAY in 1883 – Birthday of eurythmist, actress. painter Mieta Waller-Pyle – dear friend & personal helper to Marie & Rudolf Steiner, living in their household for many years.

Mieta Waller grew up in Amsterdam with five siblings – the daughter of a shipping company owner. In 1907 she met Rudolf Steiner at the congress of the European sections of the Theosophical Society in Munich & soon became one of Marie & Rudolf Steiner ‘s closest associates, working actively with them from autumn 1908 to August 1924, first in Motzstrasse in Berlin, at the Villa Hansi in Dornach .

In Christoph Lindenberg biography: ‘Rudolf Steiner-A chronicle’, we hear that in 1908, Mieta suggested to Marie Steiner “building a temple to the words of Rudolf Steiner” which gave the impetus for the construction of the Goetheanum, which she supported with generous donations. Mieta helped paint the Faust motif on the samll dome.

From 1908 she was also involved with singing & recitation performances in the Kunststuben , which offered free cultural activities for poor sections of the population in Berlin , Munich & Vienna .

In 1909 Mieta Waller took part in the performance of Édouard Schuré’s drama ” The Children of Lucifer ” & from 1910 to 1913 she played Johannes Thomasius in the Munich performances of Rudolf Steiner’s mystery dramas .

Mieta Waller was an important speech artist, she also created her own models for house construction in Dornach .

On August 5 , 1924, Mieta Waller married the American painter William Scott Pyle , who had been involved in the construction of the Goetheanum since 1921 . Together with him she founded a company for the production of vegetable dyes .

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY (4 interesting Deathdays)

1535 – Deathday of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, German magician, astrologer, & theologian. “ In Agrippa’s time one found, it is true, little comprehension of the “natural magic” which he advocated, and which seeks in nature the natural, and the spiritual only in the spirit; men clung to the “supernatural magic” which seeks the spiritual in the realm of the sensory, and against which Agrippa fought. This is why the Abbot Trithemius of Sponheim advised him to communicate his views as a secret doctrine only to a few chosen ones, who were able to rise to a similar conception of nature and spirit, for “one gives only hay to oxen and not sugar, as to songbirds.” It is perhaps to this abbot that Agrippa himself owes the right point of view.” ~ Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age, by Rudolf Steiner

1546 – Deathday of Martin Luther, German priest & theologian, leader of the Protestant Reformation. A piece of paper was later found on which Luther had written his last statement. The statement was in Latin, apart from “We are beggars,” which was in German. The statement reads:

No one can understand Virgil’s Bucolics unless he has been a shepherd for five years. No one can understand Virgil’s Georgics, unless he has been a farmer for five years.

No one can understand Cicero’s Letters (or so I teach), unless he has busied himself in the affairs of some prominent state for twenty years.

Know that no one can have indulged in the Holy Writers sufficiently, unless he has governed churches for a hundred years with the prophets, such as Elijah and Elisha, John the Baptist, Christ and the apostles.

Do not assail this divine Aeneid; nay, rather prostrate revere the ground that it treads.

We are beggars: this is true.

1564 – Deathday of Michelangelo, Italian sculptor & painter.

“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.”

~ from ‘Michelangelo’, A Lecture given by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, 8th January, 1914, GA 63

1967 – Deathday of J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist & academic. “Father of the atomic bomb” for his role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons. The first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945, in the Trinity test in New Mexico. Oppenheimer later remarked that it brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” In August 1945, the weapons were used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki.

After the war ended, Oppenheimer became chairman of the influential General Advisory Committee of the newly created United States Atomic Energy Commission. He used that position to lobby for international control of nuclear power to avert nuclear proliferation and a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb during a 1949–50 governmental debate on the question & subsequently took stances on defense-related issues that provoked the ire of some factions in the U.S. government & military. During the Second Red Scare, those stances, led to him suffering the revocation of his security clearance in a much-written-about hearing in 1954. Effectively stripped of his direct political influence, he continued to lecture, write & work in physics.

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

PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA

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 CT– (10:30 am 1/2 hour break – 11 am) 12:30 pm CT – Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50

The Categories of Aristotle: A process of contraction…exploring a path to expansion…

Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to approach Aristotle’s gift to humanity……his Categories?

Perhaps , YES! But an initial acquaintance with them can lead out of the confinement of the intellectual concept to an experience of expansion supported by Eurythmy.

In the evening lecture Claudia will introduce the life of the Categories before they became concepts – Bringing the symbols in a sequence of sounds (called the Evolutionary Sequence ) out of their conceptual form, to life, supported by Eurythmy and examples of poetry.

During the workshop we will enter into the movement of the poetry presented during the lecture. This will be accessible to Eurythmists as well as to anyone interested in the life of language, poetry and our alphabet.

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

Song-Circle with Velsum,

Eurythmy – & an artistic break out session

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT a 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

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

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.

~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 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate

Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE

Bemused

February 16, 2023History, Insight, Storytelling, Upcoming Events~hag

“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story.” ~Homer

The classical Greeks describe the Muse, as ‘She Who Knows All That Is, Ever Was or Will Be’. Mousa is the ancient Greek word for the Muse, the archetypal goddess of the mind, representing the forces of intuition, inspiration, & creative imagination, that leads to wisdom & self-realization.

She is also the power of language in all of its many forms — the power of communication at its most exalted & divine manifestation thru words, song, music, dance & art.

“Happy is he whom the Muses love: sweet flows speech from his mouth.” ~Hesiod

In the seventh century B.C.E. Hesiod sang of Nine Muses, the Mousai: Kalliopeia, muse of epic poetry & the oldest of the nine Muses; Euterpe, muse of music & lyric poetry; Melpomene, muse of singing & tragedy (interesting compo); Erato, muse of mystical & erotic love; Terpsikhore, muse of whirling & ecstatic dance; Urania, muse of astronomy & prophecy; Kleio, muse of history & heroic poetry; Thaleia, muse of comedy & idyllic poetry; & Polyhymnia, muse of sacred hymns and meditation.

The Nine Muses are the daughters of Mnemosyne, the goddess of Memory, & Zeus, the god of the lightning-like flash of inspiration. Sudden & powerful moments of intuition combined with the power of memory give piercing insights into the mysteries of the universe.

Mnemosyne, the power of remembrance, is one of the three elder Muses, along with Melete, the power of practice, study, & meditation, & Aoide, the power of song, chant, & mantra. These Muses are the ancient Divine Muse of the threefold goddess, the symbolic teacher & guide of the Pythian Priestess at the Delphic Oracle. This prophetic priestess, a channel for the Muse, was the most powerful religious & political authority in the Hellenic world for more than two thousand years.

The Pythia’s greatest law sent from the Divine Muse was: ‘Know Thyself’.

Know thyself through meditation, mantra, & memory – the tools of the 3 elder Muses who are the daughters of the goddess Gaia -the Earth, & the god Uranus – the Heavens. This knowing is the connecting principle between heaven &earth. Through meditation, mantra, & memory, we can connect the power of heaven’s creativity with the grounded, sustaining energy of the earth within our own being.

The Divine Muse taught the use of intuition & prophecy as a way to inner development. They fused prophesy & poetry with inspiration — the creative energy welling up from deep within the mind. The word inspiration means breathing into, inhalation, the breath of life, to be filled with the breath of life, to be inspired, to show genius.

The Divine Muse is inspiration — the sacred breath, the life force in the etheric – the formative power that makes consciousness possible. The Muse breathed into Hesiod, “a divine voice to celebrate the things that were and shall be.”

“This draught of flowing nectar, the Muse’s gift, the sweet fruit of the mind,” ~Pindar

Thru the Muse we are taught that vibration & music are the gateways to knowledge of the universe, of reality, & of ourselves. The Pythagoreans structured their colleges as temples dedicated to the powers of the Muse.

Both Aristotle & Plato created shrines to the Muse in their colleges of philosophy.

The word museum originally meant the shrine or temple of the Muse, designating a place of transformation of consciousness, a place of research, scholarship, & learning, a place where sculpture, painting, art, & sacred texts were kept.

“Musikos,” the Greek word for music, meant, “relating to the Muses.”

Plato used musikos to refer to the quality of being, “well educated and versed in things of the mind.” Plato taught that the concept of music encompassed all that relates to the mind. He believed in revealed knowledge as a path to knowing ultimate truth, describing the channel of flowing creativity between the human & divine as the Muse herself.

Within our thinking there are unused areas of potential energy & psychic awareness. The power to awaken these dormant regions is within us. We can open the gate to wisdom & consciousness through study, meditation, singing, & dancing — the rituals of the Muse who lies hidden in our memory, waiting to lead us to the highest states of knowledge, blessedness, & being. Once the Muse reveals the truths within us, we understand who we are & what we are supposed to do.

“[The Muses] are all of one mind, their hearts are set upon song,
and their spirit is free from care.” ~Hesiod

The Muse is not a mythological figment of the ancient past, she is the inner source of wisdom & the force of creativity within our own minds. Rise in your thinking to meet the Muse within & she will come. ~hag

16 Febrauary 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1834 – Birthday of Ernst Haeckel, a promoter of scientific racism who embraced the idea of Social Darwinism. Haeckel was also a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist, & artist who discovered, described & named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, & coined many terms in biology, including ecology. Haeckel promoted & popularized Charles Darwin’s work in Germany. The published artwork of Haeckel includes over 100 detailed, multi-color illustrations of animals & sea creatures. See Haeckel, the Riddles of the World and Theosophy, by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, 5th October 1905

1924 – Rudolf Steiner began the Karmic Relationships lecture today in Dornach GA 235-240 – KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS I, GA 235, Lecture I, 16 February 1924, Dornach

“I now wish to begin to speak to you of the laws and conditions of human destiny, which, as you know, it has become customary to describe as karma. Karma, however, cannot be seen clearly unless we are prepared to learn to know the different kinds of universal law and universal activity…Both when we try to comprehend the World’s phenomena and when we wish to understand the phenomena of human life, we are wont to speak of “causes and effects.” Especially in science nowadays, people are accustomed to speak quite generally of “causes and effects.” Yet it is precisely this habit which leads into the greatest difficulties, in face of the true reality. For if we speak in this way, we are leaving out of account the variety of forms in which “cause and effect” actually occur in the universe…”