POD (Poem Of the Day)

~My breath is like a child to me
A lulling rhythm that undulates my heart-whole
My breath hangs sweet
Making condensation in the frigid air
A wafting food for the trees
I live there
A cadence
Driving the wing of a wild bird
~hag

8 February 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: ‘Ruddy Mars is now the only bright planet visible in the overnight hours.  Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn are all too close to the Sun to be easily seen.  The red planet is moving steadily through the faint constellation of Aries, the Ram, toward Taurus, where he will encounter Aldebaran around the time of the spring equinox’. (Thanks Steve Hale & USNO)

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

According to the original; Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner today it the Birthday of King Solomon. In the ‘Temple Legend’ lectures by Rudolf Steiner, he speaks of King Solomon as the reincarnation of Abel. (And the Master Builder of the Temple Hiram Abiff, Cain)

Rudolf Steiner’s SOUL CALENDAR translated with added titles by Roy Sadler
This is the week leading to Lent. It’s the last verse dated by our ordinary solar calendar, before the lunar calendar time that dates the verses from Lent to Whitsun.

This one, v45, between Imbolc & Lent, is in the time that leads in Brazil to the world’s biggest Carnival, which this year was due from Friday February 12 to Shrove Tuesday,
February 16, next week – but the pandemic has forced it to be cancelled. v45 is the octave of Christmas (38+7), and its mirror, v8, is the octave of Easter (1+7), one reason – together with finding the iambic rhythm – why I’ve translated ‘Im Bunde’
as ‘In concert’… & rather than in its original 2nd line I let the verses begin with this…
CARNIVAL
Illuminate
v45
In concert with the spirit’s birth
the mind grows firm;
it lifts the senses’ vague allure
to perfect clarity.
When soul abundance
would bond with springlife’s coming,
thought’s power must shine its light
on sense revealing.
>>>

WHITSUN
Dream
v8
In concert with the gods’ creating
the senses’ power grows;
it overwhelms the force of thinking,
subduing it to dimness of a dream.
When bonding with my soul
wold be a holy being,
then human thinking must be stilled,
in dreamlike presence satisfied.

1810 – Birthday of Eliphas Levi, a French sage, poet, & author of more than twenty books about magic, Cabbalah, alchemical studies, & occultism.

“There was a personality who lived in the later period of Mexican civilisation and was connected with the utterly decadent, pseudo-magical Mystery cults of Mexico; with an intense thirst for knowledge he studied everything with close and meticulous exactitude. My attention was attracted to him through having made the acquaintance some years ago of a curious man who is still engaged in a primitive form of study of the decadent superstitions of the Mexican Mysteries. Such lore is of negligible importance, because anyone who studies these things at the present time is studying pure superstition; it has all become decadent to-day. But the other personality to whom I am referring imbibed with fervent enthusiasm all that could be learnt from the still flourishing Mexican civilisation before the discovery, the so-called ‘discovery’ of America. In those days Mexican civilisation was still influenced by the Mysteries but was already in the throes of decline. When mention is made to-day of Taotl, Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoka — the Beings of the Mexican Mysteries — little more is known than the names and a few scattered images. But this personality still knew that Taotl is a Being who as a cosmic, universal Spirit weaves in the clouds, lives in the lightning and the thunder. He knew too that under certain given conditions this Spirit could be invoked into consecrated water by enactments of sacred ritual. And he knew that Quetzalcoatl was a Divine Being who could take hold of man in his circulating blood, in the working of his breath. Living reality of Being was experienced in the Mexican Mysteries by the personality of whom I am speaking. He was reborn in a later age without any intermediate life as a woman. He had been a man in Mexico and was born again as a man. But in his life between death and rebirth this individuality passed through the super-sensible world in such a way that in the development of his karma — this in turn was the outcome of still earlier incarnations not in Mexico but elsewhere — he bore through the Jupiter region all that he had experienced in Mexico: knowledge that had degenerated into superstition but was nevertheless replete with vitality, saturated with the fruits of older civilisations. In the Jupiter-sphere all this assumed the form of wisdom, but a wisdom that is in truth automatic, unconscious, when compared with the wisdom man should make his own by individual effort.

When in the elaboration of karma between death and a new birth, the living, weaving wisdom of the Jupiter-sphere pours over what has been experienced by a man in a previous earthly life, wisdom and its light can still shine forth in the subsequent life. But the wisdom, then, is founded on the experiences of earthly life.

The individuality of whom I am speaking was born again in modern civilisation as Eliphas Levi. Eliphas Levi, therefore, had spent his previous incarnation in the Mexican civilisation, had then passed through the sphere of Jupiter with its wisdom, and in this sphere of Jupiter everything was worked through once again. But Mexican culture is a decadent culture and if you read the books of Eliphas Levi to-day you will find evidence of great wisdom spread out as it were over something extremely primitive. And one who has insight into these things will say: all this is Jupiter, but inferior Jupiter!” ~Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships, Volume II: Lecture XII

1894 – Birthday of George Adams Kaufmann, a British mathematician, translator & anthroposophist. He travelled widely, spoke several languages & translated many of Rudolf Steiner’s lectures into English. Through his studies in theoretical physics he contributed to the expansion & development of the natural sciences as extended by the concepts of anthroposophy.

In 1914 he had encountered Rudolf Steiner’s “Occult Science” and become a member of the Emerson Group in London in 1916. During his time as conscientious objector he had come to know Mary Fox, a Quaker & in 1920 they married.

His interest in Steiner’s ideas on social reform & his intention to translate the book The Threefold Social Order (GA 23) caused him to visit Steiner together with Ethel Bowen Wedgwood in Dornach, Switzerland. Steiner advised him to become involved in some form of social work, something Adams could readily accept amid the social collapse in Central & Eastern Europe following the war. He went on several journeys to Poland as part of the English & American Quaker organization.

In 1920 he took part in the inauguration of the first Goetheanum building. On his return to England, he cooperated with some friends on spreading the ideas of Social threefolding as well as the anthroposophical ideas of Steiner. His wife Mary Adams began her work as librarian & translator for the Anthroposophical Society in London that she was to carry for many years. In addition, Adams was the free verbal translator of around 110 lectures of Steiner into English. He went on to translate many of Steiner’s written works, often with Mary Adams.

He was often in Dornach during these times and experienced the burning of the first Goetheanum on New Year’s Eve 1922/23 & was part of the Christmas Foundation meeting of the General Anthroposophical Society in 1923/24. In 1924 he became one of the Goetheanum-Speakers authorized by Steiner.

While working as a free co-worker of the Anthroposophical Society in Britain as lecturer & workshop holder after 1925, Adams turned again to the study of the natural sciences & mathematics, concentrating particularly on projective geometry & working with Elisabeth Vreede, leader of the Section for Mathematics & Astronomy at the Goetheanum. At the beginning of the 1930s, Adams published a series of articles & essays about projective, synthetic geometry & its relationship to physics, to Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis & to anthroposophical spiritual science, particularly the pioneering work “Of Etheric Space” in the magazine Natura of the Goetheanum’s Medical Section. Here for the first time is mentioned the concept of “counter-space”, as Steiner indicated in the third of his courses on the Natural Sciences (GA 323), explained by means of non-Euclidean geometry. Some years later Louis Locher was to discover the same thing independently of Adams. From that time on the conceptual development of the idea of counter-space in its relation to normal spatial thinking became the focal point of Adams’ further scientific research. In 1933 the comprehensive work Space & the Light of the Creation – Synthetic Geometry in the light of Spiritual Science appeared, which was an overview of the spiritual scientific meaning of synthetic geometry.

When Elisabeth Vreede & Ita Wegman were dismissed from the executive of the General Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, a number of other prominent members of the German, Dutch & British Societies were expelled, including Adams. This brought to an end his cooperation with the Mathematical/Astronomical Section. When the Chairman of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain, D. N. Dunlop, died in May 1935, Adams took over as general secretary.

1907 – Birthday of Charles Kovacs – born in Vienna. When he was still a young child the family moved to Nussdorf on the Danube, where the river flowed just before the house, so that he could see & hear the barges passing by, loading & unloading. Behind the house were forests of nut trees; to the left there shone a special light over the Kahlberg. It was here that he first went to school.

With the sudden death of his father, the family – his grandmother, mother & his younger brother Erwin – moved to their uncle’s lovely villa in Baden at the foot of the Vienna Woods. At that time the inhabitants of Baden were forward-looking & had high civic standards. They built fine modern art galleries to show the new styles of painting that had become popular. Charles was very interested in painting. He visited these galleries & then worked on his own pictures when he went home. He was about twelve years old when he showed his paintings to his respected art teacher, Professor Friedrich Thetter. Thetter’s two children were also Charles’ friends at the school & Charles was invited to come regularly and to bring his paintings. Professor Thetter, a long-standing anthroposophist, then introduced Charles to the fundamentals of art, to Goethe, then to Rudolf Steiner & anthroposophy. It was an encounter Charles never forgot. He was deeply grateful to Professor Thetter & they remained close friends, corresponding even when they were far apart. Charles & his brother Erwin both became members of the Anthroposophical Society, Charles when he was 22 years old.

Life was lively in Vienna. Charles would listen to the latest hits on the wireless in the evenings & next day he would play them to his friends, for both brothers had learned from their mother to play the piano. His uncle employed him for a time in his warehouse, selling coffee & tea, & it was his son who later, when Charles was 32, invited him out to Kenya. He enjoyed working on a large farm; the compound was so extensive that he needed a horse to get around it all & for a while he was in charge of a sawmill. It was during that time that he drew (on the backs of reference cards used at the mill) & compiled a small book of Pietas – each drawing so different!

Then came the Second World War & he volunteered to join the British Army. After the war he returned briefly to Kenya where he had started an anthroposophical study group. In April 1948 Charles came to London. A relative needed somebody to take on the responsibility of his firm in Golden Square, Piccadilly, & Charles worked there for about eight years. It was well-paid work, but it was a heavy burden. Before long he came to the anthroposophical group meeting one Monday evening; this was where he met Dora, & within six months they were married. Charles was soon asked to take over the study group at Museum Street & as part of his work for this group he translated works by Rudolf Steiner not then available in English. He became a member of the Council of the Anthroposophical Society & gave many lectures. His home was frequented by members of the group most evenings. When they had left he would often paint or draw, an activity which for him seemed a necessity. It was a member of the group who urged Charles to become a teacher. And so it came about that he came to Edinburgh in 1956 to teach at the Rudolf Steiner School.

Then his most productive years began. He took over a Class 4 of thirty-five children. As part of his preparation, he wrote out his lessons day by day so that he built into his teaching a structure, inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s curriculum, which could satisfy the growing child. These notes now stand as a fine example of the new & living way Steiner wanted his curriculum presented to children. ~Charles Kovacs – Reflecting on His Life, by Floris Books

As a Waldorf teacher, Charles’ creative talents were called on more than ever before. His special gift for painting & drawing was put to good use & his work was much in evidence around the school. For example the kindergarten, which I took over, was blessed & looked upon by the guardian angel that Charles painted. He composed songs & poems, he wrote plays for his classes; Charles was completely given over to his teaching. At the same time he held parents’ evenings, had regular study groups & gave lectures within the Anthroposophical Society & to the public. For a time he travelled regularly to Ilkeston in Derbyshire to work with a group of friends there. His pupils wanted him to come to the upper school to give them the philosophy main lesson when he had already retired.

2018 – Death day of Christopher Mann, a long time Anthroposopher, His parents knew Rudolf Steiner & did the Mann translation of the Calendar of the Soul. Christopher & his wife Martina were champions of Biodynamics & eurythmy. https://www.biodynamics.com/…/celebrating-lifelong-work…Christopher produced the movie The Alchemist – A film by Frigyes Fogel and Christopher Mann Following those on their mission who have been called upon to form the earth throughout four continents…Dedicated To all who want to heal and consecrate the earth…https://vimeo.com/181737300

The picture above is Christopher at Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, which he helped build. He came to support my workshop on the Spiritual Hierarchies. He was quite lively, sharing about his early life, & then his work with land trusts & such. He was so proud of his movie The Alchemist…After a day on Zinniker Farm he invited a bunch of us to a showing in his home, & there were several teenagers from the Chicago Waldorf School Community with us, & because of that film, 1 of them wants to go into Bio dynamic farming! He touched many lives. And now he is our ally on the other side. Blessings dear friend on your spiritual journey! xox ~hag

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Weaving a non-gendered Feminist Reality with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg*

Friday 5 March 2021 – 6:30 am – 8 am Central Time as part of the The International Youth Initiative Program Initiative Forum

What are the qualities of the Divine Feminine? How can we use them to empower an innovative way of thinking, feeling & willing, to create a new world, where the human being is free?

Have paper & colored pencils at the ready for this hands-on workshop.

*Hazel Archer-Ginsberg – Founder of Reverse Ritual: Understanding Anthroposophy through the Rhythms of the Year & the ‘I Think Speech’ Podcast. Trans-denominational Minister, Essayist, Lecturer, Poet, Anthroposopher – working as the Festivals Coordinator of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch, & the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society.

***

The 8-Fold Path to the Easter Elementals

Holy Week 2021 (March 28 – April 4): Starting on Palm Sunday then thru-out Holy Week including Easter Morning, we will meet every day on Zoom at 10:10 am (Central Time) to create together a Thought-Seed Egregore based on the Herbert Hahn Verse

“When I think light, my soul shines,
When my soul shines, the earth is a star,
When the earth is a star, then I am, a true human being”

& then we will take turns sharing the indications for that day from Rudolf Steiner / The Buddha’s 8 –fold Path, known as the ‘Weekday Exercises’ (let me know if you would like to lead one of the days? (5 min) Holy Week  chart

Palm SUNDAY
Resolves or ‘RIGHT JUDGMENT.’ having been formed independently of sympathies and antipathies.

Holy MONDAY
Talking – ‘RIGHT WORD.’

Holy TUESDAY
External actions- ‘RIGHT DEED.’

Holy WEDNESDAY
The ordering of life. – ‘RIGHT STANDPOINT.’

Maundy THURSDAY
Human Endeavour. – ‘TO LET ALL THE EXERCISES BECOME A HABIT.’

Good FRIDAY
The endeavor to learn as much as possible from life. – ‘RIGHT MEMORY.’ (Remembering what has been learned from experiences).

Holy SATURDAY
To pay attention to one’s ideas. – ‘RIGHT OPINION.’

The octave of the New Sun
EASTER SUNDAY
To turn one’s gaze inwards –
‘RIGHT EXAMINATION.’

Whoever is holding the leading thoughts for that day will tie it into some 5-10 min. artistic exercise based on the indications

Group sharing (5 min)

We close with the ‘reversed’ Hahn verse.
I am a True Human Being
For the Earth is a Star
The Earth is a Star
When I Think Light
When I think Light
My Soul Shines

Then later in the afternoon on Easter Sunday – 4 April 2021, in person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & online 2 pm – 4 pm Central Time.

Group Eurythmy with Mary Ruud

Hazel Archer – The octave of the New Sun

Keynote withInes Katharina (Bee Keeper, Founder of the Biodynamic Emerald Honeybee Sanctuary, Waldorf Teacher) Ines will connect the Easter Thought with the Elemental Beings & the flight of the Queen Bee.

Mary Ruud will give us a performance of ‘Rock Spring Wonder’

We close with singing ‘Now the green Blade Riseth’

Potluck Social Time in the Schreinerei – Please bring food & drink to share

$10 Suggested Donation (can’t make it? or joining us online? please consider supporting this event, Thank you)

*Dear friends, please join the call at 10:05 am to get settled in so we can begin the Thought-Seed promptly at 10:10 am
Topic: The 8-Fold Path thru Holy Week 2021
Time: Starting on Palm Sunday Mar 28 – thru Easter Morning, 2021 10:10 AM Central Time
Every day, 8 occurrence(s)
Mar 28, 2021 10:10 AM
Mar 29, 2021 10:10 AM
Mar 30, 2021 10:10 AM
Mar 31, 2021 10:10 AM
Apr 1, 2021 10:10 AM
Apr 2, 2021 10:10 AM
Apr 3, 2021 10:10 AM
Apr 4, 2021 10:10 AM

Daily: https://zoom.us/meeting/tJErdOqsqj8iGNzL8iNTwKUXyrvmVGSSXqaW/ics?icsToken=98tyKuCtqDgpHtCRuBuPRowMBIjCb-jwiClHjY1HsEfsLRRESTbOL_BUP4RYI-vo

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