12 | August | 2023 | Cognitive Ritual

~Arthur Dove

~today:
the Sun is mellow upon the land
deep yellow dust on the head of a bee…
the lake is pregnant & still…
& the belly of the sky is cozy in my garden…
~hag

Dear friends, Can you feel the shift? Mid-August is a powerful time of transition written large now in the starry-script. Who are these Beings waiting for us to join the Cosmic conversation?

THE SPIRITUAL INDIVIDUALITIES OF THE PLANETS, GA 228, 100 years ago on 27 July 1923, Dornach – shared by RR contributor Steve Hale, can help us prepare to join the “Speaking with the Stars” happening now between: Sirius Rising with the Sun in Leo the Lion; the conjunction of Sun / Venus (occult Mercury) – which according to Astrosophy holds the cosmic memory of the first Christian initiation – the Rising of Lazarus/John; & the peak of the Perseid meteors showers heralding the call of Michael as the countenance of Christ, to rise up the fallen intelligence back to a cosmic intelligence thru Heart-Thinking.

“…With the help of Initiation-science we must again learn to realise that our planetary system is permeated with soul and spirit. And today I want to speak of the “individualities” – the individual characters of the several planets…

I could say, Venus repels, wards off the whole universe. She is demure, prudish, aloof concerning the universe; she does not wish to know anything about the universe. She regards any external universal exposure as if it would cause her maiden purity, her virginity, to be lost. She is deeply shocked when any impression from the external universe attempts to approach her. She has no desire for the universe and rejects every dancing- partner.

On the other hand, Venus is highly responsive to everything that comes from the Earth. The Earth is, so to speak, her lover…she lovingly reflects whatever comes from the Earth. If we are able to glimpse the mysteries of Venus with the eyes of soul, the whole Earth with all of her soulful secrets is there before us once again.

The truth is that human beings on Earth can do nothing in the secrecy of their souls without it being reflected back again by Venus. Venus gazes deeply into the hearts of human beings, for that is what interests her, that is what she will allow to approach her, so that the most intimate experiences of earthly life are reflected again from Venus, in a mysterious and wonderful way…The secrets of human beings in their earthly existence are transformed by Venus into dream-pictures of infinite diversity. She has a very great deal to do with poets, although they are not aware of it.

In her heart, Venus repels what approaches her from the universe but not what comes from the Earth. As I said before, she declines every would-be suitor, but for all that she listens attentively to the utterances of Mars. She transforms and illuminates her dreamlike experiences of earthly things with what is communicated to her from the universe through Mars.

Venus receives into herself everything that comes from the Earth and she listens always to Mars, without wanting him to know it. And from this process, although the Sun is there in between to regulate it, spring the forces which underlie the organs connected with the formation of human speech.

If a person wants to become familiar with the impulses in the cosmos connected with the formation of human speech, then the person must turn his gaze to this noteworthy living and weaving that plays out between Venus and Mars…

We come next to Mercury – the domain of the masters of combining concepts, and ideas in thinking, whereas Jupiter is the habitation of the masters of wisdom-filled thinking…Mercury provides the impetus for man’s capacity of reasoning about things, of making sense of them, especially for his intellect.

Venus and Mercury, on the other hand, bring into the human being the karmic element that is connected more with the life of soul and spirit and comes to expression in his qualities of heart and in his temperament…

The inner will-impulse contained in acts of free thinking, however, is due to grace bestowed by Jupiter.

From another point of view therefore, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn may also be called the liberating planets, for they give man freedom. On the other hand, Venus, Mercury and the Moon may be called the destiny-determining planets.

In the midst of all these deeds and impulses of the planetary individualities stands the Sun, creating harmony between the liberating and the destiny-determining planets. The Sun is the individuality in whom the elements of destiny-necessity and human freedom interweave in a most wonderful way. And no-one can understand what is contained in the flaming brilliance of the Sun unless he is able to behold this interweaving life of destiny and freedom in the light which spreads out into the universe and concentrates again in solar warmth.

The Sun is the flame in which freedom becomes a luminous reality in the World-All, and at the same time the Sun is the substance, as condensed ashes, in which misused freedom is molded into destiny, until destiny itself can become luminous and pass over into the flame of freedom.” ~Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

30 BC– Deathday of Egyptian Queen Cleopatra

1827 – Deathday of 1827 – William Blake, poet, painter, mystic

1831 – Birthday of Helena Blavatsky

1848 – Deathday of George Stephenson, Renowned as the “Father of Railways”, he was an English civil & mechanical engineer who built the first public inter-city railway line in the world to use steam locomotives- considered a great example of diligent application & thirst for improvement

Image result for Isaac Singer is granted a patent for his sewing machine

1851 – Isaac Singer is granted a patent for his sewing machine

1875 – Helena Blavatsky founds the Theosophical Society in NY

Image result for Thomas Edison invented the phonograph & made the first sound recording

1877 – Thomas Edison invented the phonograph & made the first sound recording

Image result for The last quagga dies at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

1883 – The last quagga dies at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Image result for The United Kingdom declares war on Austria-Hungary; the countries of the British Empire follow suit

1914 – The United Kingdom declares war on Austria-Hungary; the countries of the British Empire follow suit

1944 – Nazi German troops end the week-long Wola massacre, during which time at least 40,000 people were killed indiscriminately or in mass executions

1950 – Korean War: Bloody Gulch massacre—American POWs are massacred by North Korean Army.

Image result for 1952 â The Night of the Murdered Poets: Thirteen prominent Jewish intellectuals are murdered in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union.

1952 – The Night of the Murdered Poets: Thirteen prominent Jewish intellectuals are murdered in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union.

1953 – The Soviet Union secretly tested its first hydrogen bomb

1953 – A 7.2 Ms earthquake shakes the southern Ionian Islands. 800 people were killed

1955 – Deathday of Thomas Mann, a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, & the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic & ironic epic novels are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist & the intellectual. His analysis & critique of the European & German soul used modernized German & Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche & Schopenhauer

1960 – Echo 1A, NASA’s first successful communications satellite, is launched.

1964 – South Africa is banned from the Olympic Games due to the country’s racist policies

1976 –3,500 Palestinians are killed in the Tel al-Zaatar massacre, one of the bloodiest events of the Lebanese Civil War