“Anthroposophy in all its working, is an Easter experience, of resurrection bound up with the experience of the grave.”

Blessings my dear friends on this  Ecclesiastical Good Friday –

In our exploration of the Easter Paradox of both 2019 & 1924, here is my synopsis of the last lecture Rudolf Steiner gave to the Anthroposophical Society 22 April, 1924- The Mysteries of Ephesus. The Aristotelian Categories: The Mysteries have played an important part in the whole evolution of humankind. The Easter Festival grew out of the principle of initiation. Humankind is predestined to evolve to spiritual freedom. We know that human individuals return to the Earth again & again in their repeated earthly lives, carrying with them experiences of former epochs into later ones. The environment created by the Mysteries is an important factor in the progress of carrying from one age into another what human beings experienced & what they experience again in other forms of knowledge.

When that spiritual impulse which has gone forth from the Goetheanum thru the Christmas Foundation meeting, really finds its way into the life of the Anthroposophical Society it will provide the foundation for the Mysteries of the future. The future life of the Mysteries must consciously & deliberately be planted by this Anthroposophical Society.

In the burning of the 1st Goetheanum, the Anthroposophical Society has ever before it an event which can be turned to good will in future evolution just like the burning of the Temple of Ephesus.

Both seem a tragedy on the outside, but on the various planes of existence these things appear in different ways, & only in the freedom can we turn to good will that which on one plane is so wrong, for it is just thru these terrible events that a real evolution can be achieved.

To enter into these things with sympathetic understanding we must grasp them, as intimately as possible. How did the spiritual life of the world live in the Mysteries? Steiner talked about the how the yearly Easter Festival proceeds for the Earth from the constellations of the Sun & Moon, & how the other planets are seen from the standpoint of the Moon.

And he relates that never did human hearts & minds partake so intimately in these Northern Mysteries, this descent from the pre-earthly into the earthly life as in the Mysteries of Ephesus, devoted to Diana or Artemis, enabling her initiates to experience & enter into the spiritual life & movement within the ether of the Cosmos.

A deep impression was made on those present when the Temple Goddess expressed her joy in all things growing, springing, sprouting in the far-spread ether of the world; a feeling that wafted thru the spiritual atmosphere of the Sanctuary as a magic breath.

And as a consequence a certain instruction could be given with great clearness in these Ephesian Mysteries, whose aim was to bring the secret of the Moon forth in the human soul, creating one’s being out of the Sunlight that wove around the Moon.

Verse Steiner gave to Ita Wegman:
The Sun, in me, my King,
Leads me into the world.
The Moon, in me, maintains
My shape, she keeps my form.
Mercury holds, in me,
The Sun and Moon in one.
Venus in me is all,
Nothing without her love.
When she and Mars are one,
He speaks me as a Word,
So Jupiter can shine
All through me wisdom’s rays,
And Saturn, ripe, can beam
Through me the colours that I am.

The spiritual life in Ephesus was filled with a radiant inner light – the true dignity of the Cosmic human being, a prefiguring of the Easter thought.

All these things bound up with the Temple Sanctuary went up in the flames lit by the hand of a criminal.

Then Steiner goes on to reference:  World History in the Light of Anthroposophy, which he gave during the Christmas Conference.  Telling how “two Initiates of these Mysteries were reincarnated in Aristotle and in Alexander. “

And “When the Temple of Ephesus was burning it was the hour of Alexander’s birth. But as the Temple burned something was powerful taking place…all that had gone on in these Temple spaces was communicated to the cosmic ether.

So we may truly say: The continuous Easter Festival at Ephesus which had been contained within these Temple spaces has since been written in the great orb of the ethereal heavens.

The human wisdom which was enclosed in Temple walls escaped & was written in the cosmic ether & is visible to spiritual Imagination, the interpreter of the starry script.

The stars must mean more to us than something merely to be calculated mechanically, or mathematically.”

For Alexander & Aristotle, there came the moment when thru the influence of the Mysteries of the Kabiri there arose something like a memory of the old Ephesian time which both of them had lived thru before. But in this remembrance of an ancient time, there was a certain power to create something new.

When the cosmic sounding in the Moon was there again & Aristotle & Alexander recognized what the fire at Ephesus had signified, when they saw how this fire had carried forth into the far ether of the world the content of the Mysteries of Ephesus, then there arose in these two the inspiration to be found the Cosmic Script written down by Aristotle, known as the Categories of Being:

Quantity
Quality
Relation
Space
Time
Position
Activity (or Action)
Passivity (or Suffering)

Steiner asks us to take these concepts which Aristotle first expounded to Alexander, & learn to develop them like we did as children with the alphabet, then we will learn to read in the Cosmos.

So we see, what was a mighty revelation of instinctive wisdom thru thousands of years flowed into concepts with an inner force of life & strength which must once more be revealed in time to come.

We must find again what is resting in the grave, we must find the Sophia, the cosmic wisdom & the cosmic light. We must learn to read once more in the great universe to experience the resurrection of what lies hidden.

We are here to create an Easter Festival as an experience for all humankind. “Anthroposophy in all its working, is an Easter experience, an experience of resurrection bound up with the experience of the grave.”

It is important just at this present Easter paradox for us to feel, the full festivity of Anthroposophical striving. Can we open ourselves to feel how once upon a time humankind was blessed with a divine-spiritual revelation which shone most radiantly in Ephesus. But now all this lies buried.

How can we set free from the grave what lies buried? And then listen to hear the words spoken on that Easter morn 2000 years ago: “That which you seek is no longer here.” Can we find it in our hearts, & open minds, in true active way?

Then in full consciousness, not instinctively as in ancient time, we are led forward into the new mysteries of Easter.

This too must be united with the impulse of the Christmas conference, which must not remain a merely intellectual, theoretic & abstract past deed. It must be an impulse of the heart, it must not be dry & matter-of-fact. It must be sacred, solemn, joyful.

Then just like Aristotle & Alexander, who used the fire of Ephesus when it flamed forth like a forge in their hearts, when it flamed forth in the Cosmic ether & then bore down to them new secrets that were gathered up into those simple concepts.

Will we take it upon ourselves to use what has also been carried out into the ether with the death of the 1st Goetheanum, into a resurrection of Anthroposophia?

Can we awaken to the new dawn, shining in the far & wide ether, where the spirit-filled wisdom of the world dwells, to fill ourselves with impulses coming in towards us from the Cosmos?

The Anthroposophical Easter mood must hold to this Spirit that arises ever & again out of eternal foundations. Let us receive this as an Easter thought – as an Easter feeling into our hearts, as we experience Good Friday anew, as Love’s Sacrificial Death – even as we acknowledge the rending of the Temple Veil, to bring the transformation of the Venus-principle, thru the Sun-principle of Christ.

with humble respect ~hag

***

19 April 2019 “Speaking with the Stars”: The Pascal Full Moon, became exact at 6:12 am CDT. This evening look for Spica to the upper right of Bella Luna & brighter Arcturus to Her upper left.

***

David Newbatt

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Marc Chagall

The 1st Night of Passover

El Greco

Ecclesiastical Good Friday

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Feast Day of the Holy Lance – the spear of Longinus

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1054 – Feast Day of Leo IX, pope of the Catholic Church. Leo IX is widely considered the most historically significant German Pope of the Middle Ages; he was instrumental in the precipitation of the Great Schism of 1054, considered the turning point in which the Catholic & Orthodox Church formally separated.

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1775 – The American Revolution begins at Lexington

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1824 – Deathday of Lord Byron, English-Scottish poet & playwright, who Steiner refers to as “a seeker after the Palladium” in his Karmic Relationships lecture 1/11.

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1882 – Deathday of Charles Darwin, English biologist & theorist, who Steiner refers to as “a seeker after the Palladium” in his Karmic Relationships lecture 1/11.

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1960 – Students in South Korea hold a nationwide pro-democracy protest against president Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign

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1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, USA, is bombed, killing 168 people including 19 children under the age of six

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2005 – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is elected to the papacy and becomes Pope Benedict XVI.

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2011 – Fidel Castro resigns as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba after holding the title since July 1961.

***

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Look, she said, leaning out the window
To wave at the stream of the Pascal Moon
See how the reflected Easter light rises…
Mirroring strident spirals of the New Sun
Calling: Become
The Chalice of victory
& see thru soul eyes
To speak deeds clothed in spirit-light…
But 1st
You must drink from the cup of crucifixion

~hag

***J

Special Event for GOOD FRIDAY 19 April 2019, 7 pm – 9 pm- ‘O Man (or Woman) Know YourSelf: A Glimpse at the Human Double’ a workshop with biography worker Paulette Arnold

(1st Class is on Holy Saturday 20 April 2019)

$10 – 20 or pay what you can + Snacks to Share Encouraged 

for more info. contact Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

 A Cosmic Wake Up Call: the Easter Paradox of 2019

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