30 December 2016 – Astro-Weather: Can you spot the thin crescent Moon at the twilight time? Look low in the southwest just after the Sun goes down. The Moon is located about three fists at arm’s length to the lower right of shiny Venus. A similar distance to the Moon’s upper right look for sparkling Altair
Josephine Wall
Although Saturn passed on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth less than three weeks ago (on December 10), it already appears low in the southeast during morning twilight. The ringed planet lies above the horizon 45 minutes before sunrise. It is the brightest point of light in this part of the sky
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Patrica Lamb
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
7th Night of Hanukkah
1816 – The Treaty of St. Louis signed between the United States the Council of Three Fires (united tribes of Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi) living on the Illinois & Milwaukee rivers. The tribes, their chiefs, & their warriors had to relinquish all right, claim, & title to land which connected Chicago & Lake Michigan with the Illinois River. Today, Indian Boundary Park in West Ridge, Chicago commemorates this Treaty. In exchange the tribes were to be paid $1,000 in merchandise over 12 years
1825 – The Treaty of St. Louis between the United States & the Shawnee Nation. In this treaty, the Shawnee gave up their lands to the United States near Cape Geredeau. In return for Cape Geredeau, the United States government gave the Shawnee a sum of 11,000 dollars & leased to them a blacksmith shop for five years providing all tools & 300 pounds of iron annually
1853 – Gadsden Purchase: The United States buys land from Mexico to facilitate railroad building over a 29,670-square-mile region of present-day southern Arizona & southwestern New Mexico
1903 – A fire at the Iroquois Theater in Chicago, Illinois kills at least 655
1916 – This is the 100 year anniversary of the deathday of Grigori Rasputin, the Russian mystic, spiritual healer & monk, whose name became proverbial for the intrusion of occult influence on politics – murdered in the midst of the WW1. Rasputin was the spiritual & medical adviser to Tsar Nicolas II of Russia, the last Russian Emperor, his wife Alexandra, & their daughter Anastasia. He called himself the “secretary of the Tsar’s soul”. He prophesied that his death would lead to the demise of the Tsardom. And so it was, that 2 months after his death, in the February Revolution of 1917, the monarchy was abolished, & the Bolsheviks took power in Russia. The royal couple was murdered & only Anastasia survived exiled in the West, never recognized as the true heir. Rasputin’s murder was initiated by the British secret service at a decisive phase of the war to prevent a peace treaty. His reputation became fraught with accusations of decadence, so it’s interesting to read some statements about him from Rudolf Steiner. Even more intriguing are the after-death messages from Helmuth von Moltke’s soul that Steiner transmitted to Eliza Moltke his widow, which speak to Molke’s encounter with Rasputin’s soul in the after-life.
“When the Russian Tsar & Tarina used the inner experiences of Rasputin for the purposes of government, the people had a right to be afraid of that, because revelations from the spiritual world should only have a role in spiritual life, not in the political field. In this field only what has become our sound reason by way of the spiritual revelations should intrude. Rasputin had not developed sound reasoning, although he had revelations”. ~Rudolf Steiner 14 Feb. 1920 Dornach
“Rasputin worked directly on the will. That should not be. But people want that. He really is an unrestrained man, the ‘Rasputin’ (Russian: one without a path) Everything said about him is true, but he is nevertheless a God-Seer, that is an occult term for a grade of initiation. It is only thru him that the spiritual world, the Russian Folk-Spirit, can now take effect in Russia, thru nobody else.” ~Rudolf Steiner according to Assya Turgeneva in the early years of WWW1, recorded in her book Erinnerugen an Rudolf Steiner
1936 – The United Auto Workers union in the Flint, Michigan, stages its first sit-down strike. Workers occupied several General Motors plants for more than forty days, & repelled the efforts of the police & National Guard to retake them. A wave of strikes followed, but were put-down by the end of the decade, as the courts & the National Labor Relations Board ruled that sit-down strikes were illegal & that strikers would be fired
2009 – A segment of the Lanzhou–Zhengzhou–Changsha pipeline ruptures in Shaanxi, China, and approximately 40,000 US gal. of diesel oil flows down the Wei River before finally reaching the Yellow River
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7th Holy Night: December 30-31, Constellation of Virgo, Virgin (ruling the abdomen & digestive system) The Sphere of the Kyriotetes, Spirits of Wisdom, Dominions
Rudolf Steiner
The imagination of the Heavenly Virgin, as an indication of the cosmic being of the The Divine Sophia – the Archetypal Wisdom of the World – depicted in the 12th chapter of the Apocalypse of St John, as the woman clothed with the Sun, wearing a crown of stars & standing on the sickle moon with the dragon at her feet – reveals to us its profound connection with this Hierarchy. The ancients knew that the 12 stars corresponded to the Old Saturn evolution (Steiner’s planetary seal shows 9 stars- the process of a gradual formation of the Zodiac); the Sun image reflects the Old Sun phase (the Virgin gives birth to the Sun & is then clothed by the Sun: a picture of the birth of the etheric body) & the sickle moon to the Old Moon evolution (resulting in the origin on Earth of silver, the metal that testifies to the overcoming of the lower Moon-Forces by the higher forces of the Sun)
We find all these qualities in the being of the Mary of the Luke Gospel , an earthly reflection of this Heavenly Sophia – the twin soul of the Nathan Jesus. The Mary of the Matthew Gospel was the earlier incarnation of Eve the 1st earthly woman.
Sophia Calder
In the 5th Gospel, Rudolf Steiner tells us that at the Baptism, the 2 Marys became united to create a vessel for The Divine Sophia, in the same way that the 2 Jesus children, united at the steps of the Temple in Jerusalem, to create the perfect vessel for The Christ.
After this merging, the Mary of the Matthew Gospel became the earthly reflection of the Divine Sophia, opening the way for humanity to become the lowest member of the Sobornal (collective) being of the Sophia. Rudolf Steiner named her Anthroposophia, the force of the Wisdom that lives in the soul of humanity. This archetype carries the contemplation of the sacrifice offered by the Thrones (8th Holy Night) to the Cherubim (9th) to induce the Kyriotetes to radiate out their essence of Wisdom, which for us becomes the virtue depicted by the ‘Mother of God’ as selfless giving.
In order to receive the experience of the Christ, this Wisdom had to ‘pierce Mary’s heart like a sword’ (Luke 2:35) so that there might pour forth from Mary-Sophia the highest virtue of true giving, into the hearts of humanity. At the foot of the cross, John the disciple Jesus loved, is asked by Christ-Jesus to take this Sophia-Wisdom-the Mother of God-into his ‘house’ or soul. Thru this he becomes known as ‘John the Divine’ because he is embodied by the Divine Sophia, which enables him to write his Gospel & the Book of Revelations. This is also outpictured in his later incarnation, as ‘The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz‘.
Matthaus Merian
So on this 7th Night let us look within, to find the realm of The Virgin, & feel our connection to the being of Anthroposophy. May we seek to acquire the Wisdom that gives birth to The Christ within
Jan de Kok
Virtue: Courtesy becomes steadiness of feeling
