23 | August | 2023 | Cognitive Ritual

~Rob Gonsalve

Greetings friends – I am inspired to share this wise mantric tid-bit from our dear Dr. Steiner given today 23 August in 1911, to his Esoteric students in Munich:

“We must learn to think objectively. Those who say that they’re already thinking objectively, are often making a big mistake, for this assumption is only subjective, it’s a delusion.

Pride or ambition leads to error and superstition; we must not succumb to this. We should confront everything that comes to meet us from whatever side, with an alert, open intellect, clear thinking and sharp logic. We shouldn’t swear by what seems right to us at first; investigate it critically, don’t give in blindly to something. That’s also the way it should be in our esoteric life; no belief in authority is demanded.

And my dear sisters and brothers, the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings let me tell you that you should always maintain and use all of your intellectual powers with respect to the wisdom that’s given by them, with respect to what I’m justified in advocating here, and also with respect to me. One should approach what’s said and advocated here with healthy human understanding, with sensibleness and with an open-minded thinking, if it is only opened far enough. You shouldn’t swear by this or that but should judge for yourself.

And so we’ll summarize everything that this class — which like all esoteric classes should be a sacred one for us — has brought us with the words:

In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
The eyes of sense,
That through them I may see
The lights of bodies.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
Reason and sensation
And feeling and will,
That through them I may perceive bodies
And act upon them.
In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.
And I will incorporate into my spirit
The super-sensible eyes
That through them I may behold the light of spirits.
And I will imprint in my spirit
Wisdom and power and love,
So that through me the spirits may act
And I become a self-conscious organ
Of their deeds.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.”

~Rudolf Steiner, ESOTERIC LESSONS II
GA 266, Lesson 31, Munich, 8-23-’11

23 August 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: On or around August 23 every year, Regulus, the brightest star in constellation Leo, is in conjunction with the Sun – lost in the Sun’s glare. Regulus will return to the morning sky around the September equinox.

Regulus – Latin for ‘prince‘ or ‘little king.’ In Arabic, it is قلب الأسد (Qalb al-Asad, ‘the heart of the lion‘), the same as the Latin Cor Leōnis & Greek Kardia Leontos. In Chinese, it is 轩辕十四, the Fourteenth Star of Xuanyuan, the Yellow Emperor. In Babylonian, it was Sharru, ‘the King,‘ & LUGAL, ‘the star that stands in the breast of the Lion: the King.’ In Persian, it was Miyan, ‘the Centre,‘ & Venant, one of the four ‘royal stars’ of the Persian monarchy, where in 3,000 BC, as the Watcher of the North, it marked the summer solstice. According to Ptolemy, it is of the nature of Mars; while Alvidas states that it is similar to the Sun.

Regulus is said to be one of the most fortunate stars in the heavens. Proclus (412-485) called Regulus the “Royal Star” & asserted that those born under it have a royal-like nativity. ~ Vivian E. Robson

~Joseph Mallord William Turner – Regulus. According to the Tate museum: Regulus was a Roman general who was captured by the Carthaginians. They sent him back to Rome to negotiate the release of Carthaginian prisoners. When he returned to Carthage having failed his mission, he was tortured by being left out in the sun with his eyelids sewn open. The dazzling light in the centre of this work dramatically illustrates Regulus’ cruel punishment.

Turner first exhibited this painting in Rome in 1828. His audience there would have recognised it as a seaport from a work by the 17th-century painter, Claude Lorrain displayed in the Uffizzi gallery in Florence. It appears that Turner wanted to show himself as part of a tradition of landscape painting started by Claude.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY (sourced from Steiner orginal Calendar of the Soul, Wikipedia Commons, Sky&Telescope)

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” ~Aldous Huxley

Feast Day of Vulcan – The god of fire – including the fire of volcanoes, deserts, metalworking and the forge in ancient Roman religion and myth. He is often depicted with a blacksmith’s hammer. The Vulcanalia was the annual festival held August 23 in his honor. His Greek counterpart is Hephaestus, the god of fire and smithery.

Black Ribbon Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism & Nazism

International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade & its Abolition

79 – Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire

1244 – Siege of Jerusalem: The city’s citadel, the Tower of David, surrenders to Khwarezmian (Persian) Empire

1382 – Siege of Moscow: The Golden Horde led by khan Tokhtamysh lays siege

1572 –St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre a wave of Catholic mob violence, directed against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants) during the French Wars of Religion. Traditionally believed to have been instigated by Catherine de’ Medici, the mother of King Charles IX.

1754 – Birthday of Louis XVI of France – the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as Citizen Louis Capet during the four months just before he was executed by guillotine. He was the son of Louis, Dauphin of France, son and heir-apparent of King Louis XV, and Maria Josepha of Saxony. When his father died in 1765, he became the new Dauphin.

1839 – The United Kingdom captures Hong Kong. The ensuing 3-year conflict will later be known as the First Opium War

1914 – World War I: Japan declares war on Germany

1939 – World War II: Nazi Germany & the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret addition to the pact, the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, & Poland are divided between the two nations.

1942 – World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad

1944 – World War II: Marseille is liberated by the Allies

1944 – Freckleton Air Disaster: A United States Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator bomber crashes into a school in Freckleton, England killing 61 people

1970 –César Chávez leads the Salad Bowl strike, the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history

1973 – A bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, turns into a hostage crisis, who begin to sympathize with their captors, leading to the term “Stockholm syndrome”

1989 – Singing Revolution: Two million people from Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania stand on the Vilnius–Tallinn road, holding hands for restoration of independence

1990 – Armenia declares its independence from the Soviet Union

1990 – Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi state television with a number of Western “guests” (actually hostages) to try to prevent the Gulf War

1991 – Tim Berners-Lee opens the World Wide Web to new users

1996 – Osama bin Laden issues message entitled ‘A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places.’

2000 – Gulf Air Flight 072 crashes into the Persian Gulf killing 143

2011 – A magnitude 5.8 earthquake occurs in Virginia as a result of ‘Fracking’. Damage occurs to monuments & structures in Washington D.C. with damage estimated at 300 million