BD Preps

21 May 2017 – Astro-Weather: The thickening crescent Moon, now below the heads of the Gemini twins, shines near Gamma Geminorum (Alhena), the brightest star in the twins’ feet. Meanwhile, far to the Moon’s lower right, Mars is passing between the horn-tips of Taurus (Beta & Zeta Tauri) The 3 form a diagonal line

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Georges de La Tour.

Birthday of Mary Magdalene, sister of Martha & Lazarus.The Gospels of Luke & Mark say 7 demons were cast out of her by Jesus. She became one of Jesus’ most celebrated disciples. Within the four Gospels she is named at least 12 times, more than most of the apostles. She is most prominent in the narrative of the crucifixion of Jesus, John 19:25–26 notes that she stood by the cross, near the Virgin Mary & the Apostle whom Jesus loved. According to all 4 Gospels,[Matthew 28:1–8] [Mark 16:9–10] [Luke 24:10] [John 20:18] she was, either alone or as a member of a group of women, the 1st to testify to the resurrection of Jesus. John 20 & Mark 16:9 specifically name her as the first person to see Jesus after his resurrection.

“…As the Spiritual Soul is the principle in which the Spirit Self develops, this principle is called the “mother of Christ,” or, in the occult schools, the “Virgin Sophia.” Through the fertilisation of the Virgin Sophia the Christ could be born in Jesus of Nazareth. In the occult school of Dionysius, the Intellectual Soul was called “Mary,” and the Sentient Soul “Mary Magdalene.” ~Rudolf Steiner, Gospel of John (Basle): Lecture V

Sandro Botticelli

1265 – Birthday of Dante – according to Rudolf Steiner “…Dante became a seer at the age of thirty-five”. “…All leaders of mankind, who were aware of how the higher spiritual life of man arises out of his lower nature, have comprehended the significance of Easter. Dante therefore described his awakening — in his Divine Comedia — as taking place on Good Friday.”

“…Dante had a friend and teacher Brunetto Latini, who, as I think you will recognise from what we shall presently say, may be described as an Initiate in the true sense of the word.”

“…When you follow the teaching of the Templars, there at the heart of it is a kind of reverence for something of a feminine nature. This femininity was known as the Divine Sophia, the Heavenly Wisdom. Manas is the fifth principle. the spiritual self of man, that must be developed, for which a temple must be built. And, just as the pentagon at the entrance to Solomon’s Temple characterises the fivefold human being, this female principle similarly typifies the wisdom of the Middle Ages, This wisdom is exactly what Dante sought to personify in his Beatrice. Only from this viewpoint can Dante’s Divine Comedy be understood. Hence you find Dante, too, using the same symbols as those which find expression in the Templars, the Christian knights, the Knights of the Grail, and so on. Everything which is to happen [in the future] was indeed long since prepared for by the great initiates, who foretell future events, in the same way as in the Apocalypse, so that souls will be prepared for these events.” ~ Rudolf Steiner, The Temple Legend

1860 – Giuseppe Garibaldi begins his attack on Palermo, Sicily, as part of the Italian unification

1907 – Bubonic plague breaks out in San Francisco

1941 – World War II: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic killing over 2,100 men

1941 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims an “unlimited national emergency”

2006 – The 6.4 Mw Yogyakarta earthquake shakes central Java leaving more than 5,700 dead & 37,000 injured.

2016 – Barack Obama is the first president of United States to visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park & meet Hibakusha.

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Susan Bale

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Steller is the golden seed from which the corn arises,
Earthly is the Sun on the hill from which springs god’s day…
My body nourishes some unfolding time & purpose
My heart lifts like the Moon
& power quivers on the water…
I shine bronze & gold
& silver in the mirror of the unveiled Isis…
Today
The fixed stars & the circling planets are glad
~hag

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Ascension part 3

The festival of Ascension is a mystery not only of the forces of the macro-cosmic kingdom of the Son, into Earth-existence, but also the connection that opens us to the forces proceeding from the sphere of the Father.

The gospel of mark tells us: ‘Then the Lord, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into the heavenly spheres & sat down at the right hand of the World-Father as the fulfiller of His deeds’.

As a result of the conversations over the 40 days with the presence of The Risen Christ, the apostles were able to receive the primal sources of a new imaginative clairvoyance – removing the veil hiding the true image of death which is really a facet of the Father-God in the aspect of Creator – what is born must die, but thru Christ death becomes life.

The scene of the ascension brought to manifestation the inner content of death as a revelation of man’s higher, imaginative consciousness, which has its source in the kingdom of the divine Father.

According to the 5th gospel, the Ascension was for Christ Himself an event which is comparable only with death in human life, where the human becomes a fully spiritual being again.  –  At that moment the true meaning of death was made manifest to the apostles, they beheld it with their own eyes to be a process of union with the world of the Divine.

From that ‘turning point of time’ onward, Rudolf Steiner tells us that, one of the 1st experiences of every human being after death, is a contemplation of Christ’s Ascension, which can reveal to the person’s soul, the true picture of death & its connection to the spiritual world that lies closest to the earth, & with the highest sphere of the Father.

For the person who on earth worked to understand the mystery of Golgotha, this picture of the ascension after death becomes an affirmation, but for the soul that has not worked towards true spiritual knowledge, it is a picture of reproach.  Helping us seek in freedom to understand this mystery in our next life.

Rudolf Steiner tells us: ‘It is the Christ-impulse that works on after death; it is this impulse under whose influence man frees himself from the Moon-sphere, penetrates the starry Sun-sphere & from the impulses given to him by beings of the starry world, is there able to work upon the forming of the physical organism for his next earthly life’. Dornach 15 Sept. 1922

Christ takes our Moon-Karma upon Himself, enabling our soul to find the path of the true Ascension, which leads to the world of the fixed stars.

In the scene of the Ascension we have an indication of the all-encompassing influence of the Christ Being, as the Lord of Karma, upon the life of the human soul after death.

Tomorrow: yet another layer unveiled

Until soon

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

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