6 April 2018 – Astro-Weather: Right after dark, Orion remains up in the southwest in his spring orientation: striding down to the right, with his belt roughly horizontal. The belt points left toward Sirius, & to the right toward Aldebaran &, farther on, the Pleiades.
As dawn approaches on Saturday the 7th, you’ll find the waning Moon bunching up with Mars & Saturn.
One of the spring sky’s finest deep-sky objects, the Beehive star cluster in the constellation Cancer the Crab, sits high in the south after darkness falls.
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“What is to be the starting force & impulse for events in social & ethical life must come out of the spiritual world.” ~Rudolf Steiner, New Spiritual Impulses in History” Dornach 16 December, 1917
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
582- Death & Feast Day of Eutychius of Constantinople, Toward the end of his life, Eutychius maintained an opinion that after the resurrection the body will be “more subtle than air” & no longer a tangible thing. This was considered heretical, because it was taken as a denial of the doctrine of physical, corporeal resurrection
1483 – Good Friday – Birthday of Raphael, an Italian painter & architect of the High Renaissance. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop &, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace. From 1517 until his death, Raphael lived in the Palazzo Caprini in the Borgo, in rather grand style in a palace designed by Bramante. He never married, & was thought to be bi-sexual. He is said to have had many affairs, but a permanent fixture in his life in Rome was “La Fornarina”, Margherita Luti, the daughter of a baker (fornaro) named Francesco Luti from Siena
Raphael’s premature death on Good Friday (April 6, 1520), which was also his 37th birthday, was caused by a night of excessive sex with Luti, after which he fell into a fever &, not telling his doctors that this was its cause, was given the wrong cure, which killed him. At his request, Raphael was buried in the Pantheon.
His funeral was extremely grand, attended by large crowds. The inscription in his marble sarcophagus, an elegiac distich written by Pietro Bembo, reads: “Ille hic est Raffael, timuit quo sospite vinci, rerum magna parens et moriente mori”, meaning: “Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he was dying, feared herself to die.”
Rudolf Steiner speaks about him in his various incarnations, in ‘The Last Address’ – The Individuality of Elias, John, Raphael, Novalis. Dornach, Michaelmas Eve, 1924, GA 238
Phyllis & Aristotle by LC the Elder
1472 – Birthday of Lucas Cranach the Elder, a German Renaissance painter & printmaker
1520 – Good Friday – Deathday of Raphael
1869 – Celluloid is patented
1896 – In Athens, the opening of the first modern Olympic Games is celebrated, 1,500 years after the original games are banned by Roman emperor Theodosius I
1930 – Gandhi raises a lump of mud and salt and declares, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire,” beginning the Salt Satyagraha
1965 – Launch of Early Bird, the first commercial communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit
1971 – Deathday of Igor Stravinsky, Russian-American pianist, composer, & conductor
1992 – Deathday of Isaac Asimov, American science fiction writer
2008 – The 2008 Egyptian general strike starts led by Egyptian workers later to be adopted by April 6 Youth Movement & Egyptian activists
2015 – Deathday of Ray Charles
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POD (Poem Of the Day)
~O Tree of Life
Now is not your Winter
The red-rose-vine will entwine
The ever greening bough
In a slow motion rapture
~hag
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Sunday April 8th 2 pm – 4 pm
At our Easter-Tide Festival we will begin downstairs doing group Eurythmy with Mary Ruud: “The light of the sun is flooding The realms of space; The song of birds resounds Through fields of air; The tender plants spring forth From Mother Earth, And human souls rise up With grateful hearts To all the spirits of the world” ~ from the 1st Mystery Drama: The Portal of Initiation, by Rudolf Steiner.
Then in the upper room:The Chymical Wedding: Christian Rosenkreutz: ‘Granum Pectori Jesu Insitum’ Interactive Art Projections & Lecture with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg
Social Art – Exploring the relationship between Christian Rosenkreutz & Rudolf Steiner + Alchemy & Me
We end downstairs with a recapitulation of the verse from the Portal of Initiation in Eurythmy with Mary Ruud
$10 Donation to support Eurythmy & Art Supplies
Potluck to Share Encouraged – Hazel will bring the Pascal Lamb
For more info. contact festivals coordinator Hazel Archer Ginsberg