This season of Whitsun-tide is the world-festival of the NOW, highlighting the challenging relationships of Self & community. How do we work as individuals to transform our ingrained sympathies & antipathies? How do we purify our astral nature in order to make ourselves into a vessel worthy to receive the Holy Spirit, giving us the possibility of manifesting the ‘Spirit Self’ – healing the formative forces of our Life-Spirit, which will provide the capacity to create new social forms..?

In ancient times the human being experienced the True Self, the Higher I AM, in the cosmos outside of them in the Sun sphere thru initiation, by leaving the body. – This was outpictured in the time of the ancient Summer Solstice Festivals – Which have now become mysteries of St. John the Baptist, where the Spirit is called to become manifest, by applying the powers of the Archangel Uriel.

The Whitsun-tide inaugurates a new age, when human beings thru a personal path of self-guided catharsis comes to an awakening of the Higher I AM in “their inmost being” as a force of transformative power, which is the force of love. 

The Greek word for grace is, “Charis”, which means the free love from God. 

This brings us back to the great social question of our time: the individual in relation to the whole – the community, & the cosmos.

Only by a social & personal catharsis which allows the true spirit of freedom, the true I AM, to eclipse our small personal egotism & the lower impulses of our nature, can a new community & new language of universal sister/brotherhood be created. 

Only out of the spiritual recognition of the universal Human Being, will the ideas & applications of a new approach to fraternity in economics; equality in human rights; & freedom in the cultural/spiritual life, be accomplished. 

May we strive to serve this goal out of the spirit of The Sophia.

~hag

2 June 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The bright waxing gibbous moon will glow near fiery Antares, the brightest star in Scorpius the Scorpion, after sunset this evening. The following evening finds the full moon close to Antares. You can watch them move across the sky all night.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

“The Master said, “A true teacher is one who, keeping the past alive, is also able to understand the present.” (Analects 2.11)” ~Confucius

455 – Sack of Rome

1098 – First Crusade: The first Siege of Antioch ends as Crusader forces take the city; the second siege began five days later.

1692 – Bridget Bishop is the first person to go to trial in the Salem witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts; she was found guilty and later hanged

1882 – Deathday of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian general & politician. Spoken of as a high initiate in the Hibernian Mysteries in ‘Karmic Relationships’ Vol 1, lec. 11 by Rudolf Steiner (June 2^nd is also Festa della Repubblica -The Italian National Republic Day)

One of my fav. stories: “…Garibaldi became acquainted in a most extraordinary way with the woman who was to be the mainstay of his happiness for many years. He was out at sea, on board ship, looking landwards through a telescope. To fall in love through a telescope — that is certainly not the way it happens to most people!

Destiny again made it easy for him to become quickly acquainted with the one whom he had chosen through the telescope to be his beloved. He steered at once in the direction in which he had looked through the telescope, and on reaching land he was invited by a man to a meal. It transpired, after he had accepted the invitation, that this man was the father of the girl he had seen! She could speak only Portuguese, and he only Italian; but we are assured by his biographer, and it seems to be correct, that the young woman immediately understood his carefully phrased declaration of love, which seems to have consisted simply of the words — in Italian of course — “We must unite for life.” She understood immediately. And it really happened so, that from this meeting came a life-companionship that lasted for a long, long time.

Garibaldi’s wife shared in all the terrible and adventurous journeys he made in South America, and some of the recorded details of them are really most moving. For example, the story is told of how a report got about that Garibaldi had been killed in battle. His wife hurried to the battlefield and lifted up every head to see if it were her husband’s. After a long time, and after undergoing many adventures in the search, she found him still alive. It is most affecting to read how on this very journey, which lasted a long time, she gave birth to a child without help of any kind, and how, in order to keep it warm, she bound it in a sling about her neck, holding it against her breast for hours at a time. The story of Garibaldi’s South American adventures has some deeply moving aspects.” ~Rudolf Steiner, KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS I, GA 235

1922 – Start of the West-East Congress in Vienna, opened by Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz. At this conference Rudolf Steiner gave his last lecture on Threefolding (1917 – 1922)

~Kindling Radiance~

A Community Festival Gathering Celebrating St. John’s-Tide

Saturday, June 24, 2023 at Zinniker Farm

5:30 pm Potluck – Please bring food & drink to share

Artistic Offerings – Poem, Song… Express yourself!

7 – 9 pm – Bonfire Drum Circle w/ Hazel & Ultra-Violet Archer

Show support for Zinniker Farm – $15 more or less Love Donation

Co-hosted by The Christian Community of Southeast WI. & Chicago
http://thechicagochristiancommunity.org/ & https://zinnikerfarm.com/ & ReverseRitual.com

>>> RSVP margaretthom27@yahoo.com Subject: St. John’s