All posts by Hazel

About Hazel

Having grown up in the wastelands of suburbia, I found refuge in the wilds of nature which sprung up in the empty lots behind the track housing. Developing a rich inner life, singing, writing plays or poetry and harvesting plants to make herbal medicines with my grandmother, helped get me through the mendacity of a public school education, graduating H.S. in 3 years at age 15. I backpacked around the sacred sites of Europe for a year, and then took my heart to San Francisco on a full scholarship to study Philosophy & Comparative Religion (with a minor in Women’s Studies) at SFSU. There in the dusty halls of dead thinking, I met Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Science through fate and the discovery of Owen Barfield, and began to work with the basic books on my own. (It was almost 25 years later when I finally discovered that there was such a thing as an Anthroposophical Society!) Destiny had prepped me through Rosicrucianism which came into play at an early age, (that’s another long story I would be happy to relate over coffee) but I didn’t officially join the Societas Rosicruciana in America (S.R.I.A), headquartered in Kingston NY, until I moved to NYC after college. I began applying my Midwest work ethic, and my eclectic blend of teachings in the Big Apple. I became a neighborhood leader working with disenfranchised youth. It was almost impossible for former drug addicts, run aways, and artist types to find affordable housing in Manhattan, so the focus of my community activism was with the ‘Homesteading Movement’. We became ‘squatters’ renovating several blocks of abandoned city owned buildings on the ‘Lower East Side’. Through this community I spearheaded many artistic initiatives such the experiential guerrilla Theatre Troupe, “The Valkyries.” I was also a singer, songwriter, and drummer, performing in several “No New York” genre original bands (Heal, Health Hen, Baby Boom) recording and touring extensively in the U.S. and Europe. In the 1980’s the Lower East Side was a cultural Mecca and we were featured at CBGB’s, the Mud Club, the Bitter End, the Beat Kitchen, etc. When I wasn’t on tour, I was a vegetarian chef; and diligently worked the Rosicrucian path traveling to upstate NY for the S.R.I.A workings. I also studied for 4 years and was ordained as a Trans-denominational Minister at the Spiritual Science Center, of Maryland, a school dedicated to teaching comparative religions, philosophy, & service to humanity. I moved to Chicago when my uncle was dying of AIDS. I became a Sous-chef at a Vegetarian restaurant, and started co-creating with a ‘Hermetic Order’, who had a healing center on the Northside, and sacred land in Indiana, making plant medicines again. I became the Founder & Facilitator of: The SheDrums MysteryLodge, featuring workshops, Retreats & Rites of Passage for Women. ‘the WE drum Tribe’ = “the Heart-Beat of Chicago’s Conscious Community”. E.V.A. (Divine Expressions of Vital Alchemy) A collaborative dance company that embodied the Divine Feminine through seasonal myth-telling performances. Sanctuary Dance: The Chicago facilitator for the annual International EarthDance, a worldwide dance event to promote unity across cultures. Producer, director, writer & videographer for The EarthNetwork, a monthly program focused primarily on environmental, political, & spiritual issues. Mother-Earth-Minute 8x’s a year at Lake Street Church in Evanston Classes on the Wheel of the Year for the Chicago Park District. Videographer for Richard Shay (Art Shay’s son) working with the likes of Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey and Gene Siskel. WRD Environmental Consultant for the Chicago Conservation Corps (C3). When I was almost 40 years old I had my daughter Ultra-Violet Archer, and married Chuck Ginsberg. It wasn’t until my girl was at the Chicago Waldorf School that I finally heard about the Anthroposophical Society, and discovered that the Branch was within walking distance to our house! Through the Waldorf School I Trained with Kim John Payne’s Social Inclusion Intervention & Mediation program called ‘Justice Without Blame’; and went on to do Hakomi, and Matrix leadership training in team building and consensus processes. As a Minster I started a business called “Milestones” Creating Custom Ceremonies for All Occasions: Traditional Weddings, as well as same sex Marriages, Fertility Rituals, Baby Blessings, Renewal of Vows, Home and Corporate Blessings, Crossing over ceremonies, Funerals, Memorials/Celebration of Life, and other Rites of Passage – Specializing in Coming of Age Initiations for girls and women. I studied with Susanne Down and Founded ‘Wisdom Roots Puppetry’ – Working in the Waldorf-Tradition of Therapeutic Seasonal Story, Song and Ensouled Puppetry. I have been the Cultural Events and Festivals Coordinator for the Rudolf Steiner Branch in Chicago for about 10 years; and a member of the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society for 7 years. I am a member of the First Class of the School of Spiritual Science, and of the Esoteric Youth Circle. Because I have long been inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s original Calendar of the Soul, where he commemorates feast days, and birth and death days of important individualities; about 4 years ago I founded ‘Reverse Ritual: Understanding Anthroposophy through the Rhythms of the Year’ and recently the ‘I Think Speech’ Podcast; where I strive to reveal the patterns connecting the seasonal round with human karma, great historical events, as well as repeated weather patterns, natural catastrophes, wars, and the many milestones that can help us understand the past, stand with courage in the present, and see what is wanting to come in from the future. You can find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals that I offer or facilitate HERE I look forward to serving on the General Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America, especially at this important ‘Turning Point’ in world history as we approach the 100 year anniversary of the Christmas Conference, a true Whitsun event for the evolution of humanity. ~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 Cultural Events and Festivals Coordinator of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch, & the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society. I am ready to bring my Festivals, Lectures & Programs to your community once again!

Enduring

Celestial Event, History, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Upcoming Events
Tina Spiro

~i change as the old ones before me changed
constantly & with rejoicing…
i live not in the memory of my bones,
but in the fresh grass of the fields,
enduring the heat & cold without,
finding peace within…
~hag

28 March 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

“Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.” ~ Thomas Aquinas

1483 – Birthday of Raphael,(Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino) Italian painter & architect. In Rudolf Steiner’s last address he speaks about this individualities’ previous lives as John the Baptist & Elijah.

1515 – Birthday of St. Teresa of Ávila, From the Pastoral Medicine lecture #5: “In the case with such personalities as St. Teresa there is continuous healing coming from the spirit. When we study these individuals, we find that as a first stage the ego organization separates from the rest of the human organism. It then draws the astral body closely to it, in a certain sense away from the physical-etheric organism. This is in the waking state. What is the consequence of this? You can easily see that this puts the individual into a kind of dream condition. From a spiritual-scientific point of view the ego, by drawing the astral body to itself, is not allowing it to enter the physical and etheric bodies completely, and this brings about a kind of dream condition. But because of the special karmic density, both ego and astral body are strong, and they bring into the dream condition receptivity for the perception of the spiritual world. Dream is transformed into a state in which the individual is really able to see into the spiritual world and to feel the presence of spiritual beings.” ~Rudolf Steiner

1592 – Birthday of John Amos Comenius, Czech bishop Pansophia educator. Rudolf Steiner speaks of him as an adviser to Harun-al-Rashid in the Karmic Relationships Vol. 6 lecture 8. “…Haroun al Raschid and his wise Counsellor passed through the gate of death. But after their life between death and rebirth they continued to pursue their earthly aims in remarkable ways. It was their aim to introduce Arabian modes of thinking into the European world with the help of the rudiments of the Intelligence now spreading in Europe. And so after Haroun al Raschid had passed through the gate of death, while his soul was traversing spiritual, starry worlds, we see his gaze directed unswervingly from Baghdad across Asia Minor, to Greece, Rome, Spain, France and then northwards to England. Throughout this life between death and rebirth his attention was directed to the South and West of Europe. And then Haroun al Raschid appeared again in a new incarnation — becoming Lord Bacon of Verulam. Bacon himself is the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid who in the intervening time between death and rebirth had worked as I have just described.

But the other, the one who had been his wise Counsellor, chose a different direction — from Baghdad across the Black Sea, through Russia and then into Middle Europe. The two individualities took different paths and directions. Haroun al Raschid passed to his next earthly goal as Lord Bacon of Verulam; the wise Counsellor during his life between death and a new birth did not divert his gaze from the sphere where influences from the East can be increasingly potent, and he appeared again as Amos Comenius (Komenski), the great educational reformer and author of “Pan-Sophia.” And from the interworking of these two individualities who had once been together at the Court in Baghdad there subsequently arose in Europe something which unfolded — more or less at a distance from Christianity — in the form of Arabism derived from influences of that past time when the Intelligence had first fallen away from Michael on the Sun.

Here we have indicated something that lies as sub-strata of the soil into which we to-day have to sow the seeds of Anthroposophy. We must ponder deeply over the inner and spiritual reality behind these things”.

1878 – Birthday of Carl Unger – Introduced to Anthroposophy by Adolf Arenson, who became his stepfather. Unger joined the Society & was a member of the Esoteric School led by Rudolf Steiner early on in 1904. Read a short bio here. “On January 4, 1929, Unger was to give a lecture in Nuremberg on the subject What is Anthroposophy? But shortly before the start of the lecture, he was shot dead by the mentally confused Wilhelm Krieger.”

Carl Unger The Language of the Consciousness Soul. (Aphorisms based on Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, part 1 )

All knowledge transforms the one who knows.

Breathing in pure thinking is the first clairvoyance .

In the etheric world, concept and seeing are of equal value .

The diffentiating of the animal from man is a moral process.

The reality of the “I’ ( ego ) is the source of all knowledge.

All knowledge is wrested from death.

The soul – dream of day – consciousness is an intermingling of sleeping and waking.
Conscious forgetting leads to meditation.

Conscious remembering leads to Imagination.

If memories are to be of value they must be morally controlled.

The investigation of freedom is an obtaining of freedom.

Nature is the other side of spirit.

On the path of knowledge thinking and willing cross one another.

The strongest argument against freedom is death.

The strongest argument against the necessity of nature is knowledge.
The life – tableau after death is a cosmic dream.

Morality is the necessity of the night retrospect.

The Initiate carries freedom into the moral world.

Concepts are the conscious participation of spirit – land in ordinary consciousness.

The great turning – point for causality is the midnight hour of existence.

Knowledge, love and sacrifice are man’s path to knowledge.

Imagination transforms time into space.

Inspiration transforms causality into time.

Intuition transforms the permanence of being into into causality.

Work on the consciousness soul signifies redeeming of the Idea from earthly death into cosmic life.

The ‘I’ ( ego ) experiences causality, its essence is permanence of being .

The astral body experiences time, its essence is causality.

The etheric body experiences space, its essence is time.

The physical body suffers death, its essence is space.

Anthroposophy as spiritual science teaches us to understand cosmic beings from out of our earthly consciousness.

Anthroposophy as a path of knowledge leads us to shape earthly life from out of the cosmos .

The physical organisation of man as creation is half – finished , the other half devolves upon man himself.

The law of the will is morality, its realisation on earth, destiny.

Man’s knowledge of nature , is nature’s self – knowledge.

Spiritual science is man’s self – knowledge.

The spirit – self sees destiny through the organ of man’s metabolic – limb system.

Art reveals supersensible self – knowledge.

Every true introduction to Anthroposophy is a preliminary karma exercise.

Man experiences his being over against nature, and the being of nature within himself.

Man bears within himself only one part of his being; the other is nature; he is indebted to her from primeval times .

Only that can become destiny which has previously been carried through the spiritual world.

That which pulses through earth life as destiny is seed for future cosmic development.

Destiny is cosmic judgement of man’s deeds.

The individual can have no destiny to himself; destiny is the strongest social force.

Questions of destiny must be lifted out of the individual into the social realm.

Historical standards are gained by means of an understanding for karma.

During the present earth – life the important thing is to act out of knowledge.

The language of the consciousness soul does not only speak to man of the spiritual world, but it should also speak to the spiritual world of man.

The cosmic battle of the present time is being wager around human wisdom.

He who would offer sacrifice may not come with empty hands.

He who would offer himself must first be of value.

Through analysing, a whole is drawn out of it’s own sphere into the next one below.

In order to work synthetically, we have to climb one stage higher.

The best analyst is death; only from the realms on the other side of death do we gain really constructive forces.

Thinking of thinking yields Imagination; feeling of feeling , Inspiration; willing of willing, Intuition.

1941 – DeathDay of Virginia Woolf, English novelist, essayist, short story writer.

1943 – DeathDay of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Russian pianist, composer, & conductor

1985 – Deathday of Marc Chagall, Russian-French painter & poet

1994 – DeathDay of Eugène Ionesco, Romanian-French playwright & critic

~Juan de Flandes

“Lazarus – Come Forth” – Through The Word & Eurythmy w/ Rev. Jeana Lee, Mary Ruud & Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Starting at Sundown Friday 31 March 2023
7 pm – 8:30 pm CT at the Christian Community 2135 W. Wilson

Leading Thoughts & Close of Day with Rev. Jeana Lee – Vesper singer – Ultra Violet Archer

Continuing on Lazarus Saturday 1 April 2023
10 am – 12 noon CT
at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4249 N. Lincoln Ave

Night School Check-in w/ Hazel Archer – Eurythmy w/ Mary Ruud

$10 more or less
Please bring a potluck dish to share for the luncheon after the Festival

For more info. contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Hag@rschicago.org

altar piece Colijin de Coter

Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Resurrection with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Song-Circle with Velsum Voices, 

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT a hybrid event 

in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map)

& on zoom https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator

$10 more or less…www.rschicago.org/donate

PRESENTS:

The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it. Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll

Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance

Gerald Shepherd

When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.

Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.

This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.

Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.

Nancy Poer

~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor  with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy

Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom

We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.

Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83663366670?pwd=L292UzlOR1pkZjBXSWpxK1B2b0o1dz09 Meeting ID: 836 6336 6670 / Passcode: 397593

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
*Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate

Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE

Gush hush

Celestial Event, History, Poetry, Upcoming Events
Nicolette Maw

~Into my Inner Essence
Gushes the riches of the sense world…
The Wisdom of The Logos finds Herself
In the mirror-image of mine Eye,
That Her Power out of me
Must shape anew the Eternal Resurrection…
~hag

27 March 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Jupiter and Mercury are in conjunction very low in bright twilight, due west. And Bella Luna shines just left of Beta Tauri and somewhat farther to the lower right of Mars.

Dora Brenta

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

The Strange Story of Typhoid Mary, Quarantined on North Brother ...

1915 – Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States is put in quarantine for the second time, where she would remain as a prisoner for the rest of her life.

1966- DeathDay of Karl Konig, Founder of Camphill – Extract from Karl König’s address on May 7th 1964 at the opening ceremony of the Camphill School Föhrenbühl at the Lake of Constance. “We need to join together again in communities, but such communities that are not governed by bonds bonds of heritage, but by spiritual principles that incite us to strive together and work for each other. There a mood can be set where adults and children can live in unison; important and not so important people, able and not so able but nonetheless in reciprocal appreciation of the dignity of the individual. Only when a new style of community is formed in this way will it become possible for children and young people to reach an expression of their true being out of which their individual contribution can ensue.”

1981 – The Solidarity movement in Poland stages a warning strike, in which at least 12 million Poles walk off their jobs for four hours.

~Juan de Flandes

“Lazarus – Come Forth” – Through The Word & Eurythmy w/ Rev. Jeana Lee, Mary Ruud & Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Starting at Sundown Friday 31 March 2023
7 pm – 8:30 pm CT at the Christian Community 2135 W. Wilson

Leading Thoughts & Close of Day with Rev. Jeana Lee – Vesper singer – Ultra Violet Archer

Continuing on Lazarus Saturday 1 April 2023
10 am – 12 noon CT
at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4249 N. Lincoln Ave

Night School Check-in w/ Hazel Archer – Eurythmy w/ Mary Ruud

$10 more or less
Please bring a potluck dish to share for the luncheon after the Festival

For more info. contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Hag@rschicago.org

altar piece Colijin de Coter

Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Resurrection with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Song-Circle with Velsum Voices, 

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT a hybrid event 

in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map)

& on zoom https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator

$10 more or less…www.rschicago.org/donate

PRESENTS:

The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it. Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll

Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance

Gerald Shepherd

When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.

Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.

This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.

Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.

Nancy Poer

~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor  with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy

Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom

We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.

Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83663366670?pwd=L292UzlOR1pkZjBXSWpxK1B2b0o1dz09 Meeting ID: 836 6336 6670 / Passcode: 397593

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
*Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate

Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE

Moving Thru

Biography, Calendar of the Soul, Celestial Event, Community, History, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Upcoming Events
Lament of Mary Magdalene at the tomb ~JOSE LUIS CASTRILLO

Greetings friends – All the while, as we experience the darkness before the dawn during Passion-Tide  – “my Self lies lamenting on the ground” – we can also feel the stirring of transformative healing in the catharsis of our faithful endeavoring.   

~hag

The ‘Great Physician’ is felt in the presence of the Healing Spirit – Rising from the caduceus of The Archangel Raphael – Pulsing out into the world every Spring.

These health giving powers redeem great evil. The hardening, or the dissolving of our breathing, the forces which make for illness, can be a catalyst for catharsis & change, when we meet them in Christened consciousness.

If we allow this active imagination of the Archangel of Spring to arise in our thinking, it can lead directly to a way of life that engenders a Living Ritual – embracing The Holy Spirit, which must be cultivated & preserved on Earth – thru our human being.

~hag

Inspired from Rudolf Steiner’s The Breathing Process of the Earth

This weekend thru our exploration of the Categories of Aristotle with Claudia Fontana & our working with the Evolutionary Sequence in Eurythmy we were fortified!

This cultural program was conceived as an opening to the Spring Festivals. Then as Claudia was leading us thru forms to poems by Novalis about the Sophia, I realized that we were gathering for the Eurythmy workshop on The Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary which is also the deathday of Novalis – So perfect!

photo by pianist Jonathan Hadley

Thanks to Claudia & to all who took part in the journey in all worlds.

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated with added titles by Roy Sadler
PASSIONTIDE 1II
Cleanse The Temple
v51
The senses’ wealth
is pouring into human inwardness;
the Cosmic Spirit finds itself
in human eyes,
which must, reflecting it,
revitalise their seeing.

Eleanor Merry in her Calendar of the Soul beautifully expresses, “The sense-organs will become transmitters of Spiritual Light from Earth to Heaven.” Karl König notes that in this period before Easter, it is a deeply moving experience for the soul to recognize that the Cosmic Spirit seeks for and finds the human; in the period after Easter, it will be the human beings’s turn to rediscover the Spirit ruling in the world.

the mirror verse
EASTER II
Participate
v2
Arising into senses’ all-enwoven outwardness
thought’s power sheds its separate strand;
the worlds of spirit find again
their human offspring,
whose soul must find her seed in them
but in herself the fruit.

26 March 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1827 – Death-Day of Ludwig van Beethoven, German pianist & composer

1830 – The Book of Mormon is published in Palmyra, New York.

1856 – Birthday of Fritz Lemmermayer, an Austrian writer, journalist & closest childhood friend of Rudolf Steiner in Vienna. Fritz was a passionate anti-materialist, he wanted to devote his life to the creation & maintenance of spiritual values. In 1883 he completed his novel “The Alchemist”. Rudolf Steiner met Lemmermayer again in 1886 in the circle of the poet Marie Eugenie delle Grazie.  An extensive correspondence attests to the close friendship between the two (see GA 38).

Steiner says: Fritz Lemmermayer, with whom I was later on terms of intimate friendship, I came to know at one of delle Grazie’s afternoons. A highly noteworthy man. Whatever interested him he expressed with inwardly measured dignity. In his outward appearance he resembled equally the musician Rubinstein and the actor Lewinsky. With Hebbel he developed almost a cult. He had definite views on art and life born out of the sagacious understanding of the heart, and these were unusually fixed. He had written the interesting and profound romance, Der Alchemist(3), and much besides that was characterized by beauty and depth. He knew how to consider the least things in life from the view-point of the most vital. I recall how I once saw him in his charming little room in a side-street in Vienna together with other friends. He had planned his meal: two soft-boiled eggs, to be cooked in an instantaneous boiler, together with bread. He remarked with much emphasis while the water was heating to boil the eggs for us: “This will be delicious!” In a later phase of my life I shall again have occasion to speak of him ~Rudolf Steiner, The Story of My Life, Chapter VII Lemmermayer & Steiner joined the ranks of the Viennese artist circle in the house of the protestant priest Alfred Formey. In 1891 Lemmermayer was vice president of Schrifstellerbundes Iduna , named after Iduna , the Norse goddess of youth & immortality a counterweight against the currents of naturalism. Lemmermayer  became a member of the Anthroposophical Society  in 1920. He Steiner on many trips through Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Holland & England.  This led to his 1929 published memories,  where he spoke about Rudolf Steiner, Robert Hamerling & other personalities of the Austrian intellectual life of the 80s. In addition, Lemmermayer published in the weekly ” Das Goetheanum “.

1874 – Birthday of Robert Frost, American poet & playwright

1892 – Deathday of Walt Whitman

1902 – Deathday of Cecil Rhodes – British imperialist & mining magnate

1979 – Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin & Jimmy Carter (I love you JC) sign the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty in Washington, D.C

Juan de Flandes

“Lazarus – Come Forth” – Through The Word & Eurythmy

w/ Rev. Jeana Lee, Mary Ruud & Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Starting at Sundown Friday 31 March 2023
7 pm – 8:30 pm CT at the Christian Community 2135 W. Wilson

Leading Thoughts & Close of Day with Rev. Jeana Lee

Continuing on Lazarus Saturday 1 April 2023
10 am – 12 noon CT
at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4249 N. Lincoln Ave

Night School Check-in w/ Hazel Archer – Eurythmy w/ Mary Ruud

$10 more or less or pay what you will
Please bring a potluck dish to share for the luncheon after the Festival

For more info. contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Hag@rschicago.org

Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Recogniton

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg,

Song-Circle with Velsum, 

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT a hybrid event in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & on zoom

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
www.rschicago.org/donate

PRESENTS:

The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it. Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll

Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance

For more info contact Aline Hanle aline@infinityfoundation.org

Gerald Shepherd

When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.

Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.

This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.

Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.

Nancy Poer

~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor 

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy

1- 3 pm CT – Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom

We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.

Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83663366670?pwd=L292UzlOR1pkZjBXSWpxK1B2b0o1dz09 Meeting ID: 836 6336 6670 / Passcode: 397593

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
*Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate

Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE

Hail Mary

History, Insight, Poetry, Quote, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Upcoming Events
Pin on Fra Fillipo Lippi 1406 -1469
Fra Fillipo Lippi

Make your Annunciation today!
That YOUR Conception will Be Immaculate
~hag

Love works magic.
It is the final purpose of the world story
The Amen of the universe.
~Novalis

Pin on Visionary Art
BARBARA MARIOTTI

The Feast of the Annunciation, also known as Lady Day, the Feast of the Incarnation (Festum Incarnationis), Conceptio Christi (Christ’s Conception), commemorates the visit of the Archangel Gabriel to the Luke Mary holding the energy of the Virgin Sophia, to facilatate the pouring in of the Holy Spirit, so that Mary could concieve the Son of God. Gabriel’s salutation: “Hail, Mary full of grace, the LORD is with thee” (Luke 1:28; gratia plena Dominus tecum), & Mary’s response to God’s will, “be it done to me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38; fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum). The “angelic salutation” is the origin of the Hail Mary prayer & the Angelus; the second part of the prayer comes from the salutation of Saint Elizabeth to Mary at the Visitation.

Chart via John Jardine Goss/ EarthSky.

25 March 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Look for the lovely gathering of Bella Luna, Venus & the Pleiades star cluster. People around Bangladesh, Hong Kong & Malaysia, will see the moon occult – or pass in front of – the planet Venus!

Annunciation - Wikiwand

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1801 – Deathday of Novalis. From Rudolf Steiner:  “…Novalis could glance back to a time in which gods moved among men, when everything took place spiritually because spirits and souls had not yet descended into earthly bodies. He perceived a point of transition: how death hit the world and how the human beings during this time placed death as their earthly shadowing and how he tried to brighten it up through fantasy and art. But death remained a riddle.

Then something of universal significance happened. Novalis could perceive the universal meaning of what had happened at that time on earth. Souls from the kingdoms of nature descended to the earth. Forgotten were the memories of their spiritual original existence, yet a unique spiritual Being remained in this universal womb of creation from which everything descended. One Being provisionally held back; it had held itself above and only provisionally sent its gift of grace downward, and then, when human beings needed it the most, it also descend into the earthly sphere. It remained in the spiritual spheres above the being of the spiritual light, this Being was hidden behind the physical sun. It held itself in heavenly spheres and descended when human beings needed to once again be able to rise up to spiritual worlds. It descended with the Mystery of Golgotha when Christ appeared in a physical body.

Humanity understands Christ in His universal unfolding when the life of Jesus of Nazareth is followed back to His spiritual origins, to the unsolvable riddle of death. The Greek spirit of death appears as a pondering muse, as an enigma which cannot be solved. Even the Greeks sensed that the riddle which is hidden in the youth’s soul, found its solution with the Event of Golgotha, that here victory overcomes death and as a result a new impulse is given to humanity.

This Novalis could see and as a result there appeared to him, from the mystery of faith and the mystery wisdom, the Star which the old Magi had followed. As a result he understood the actual essence of what the Christ death implied. In the night of the soul the riddle of death revealed itself to him, the riddle of the Christ. This was it, which this extraordinary individual wanted to learn — through the memory of earlier lives — what the Christ, what the event of Golgotha signified for the world.” ~ Novalis and his “Hymns to the Night” Lecture by Rudolf Steiner in Berlin, “Matinee” 26 October 1908

~hag

“In ancient times, over the widespread families of men an iron Fate ruled with dumb force. A gloomy oppression swathed their heavy souls — the earth was boundless — the abode of the gods and their home. From eternal ages stood its mysterious structure. Beyond the red hills of the morning, in the sacred bosom of the sea, dwelt the sun, the all-enkindling, living Light. An aged giant upbore the blissful world. Fast beneath mountains lay the first-born sons of mother Earth. Helpless in their destroying fury against the new, glorious race of gods, and their kindred, glad-hearted men. The ocean’s dark green abyss was the lap of a goddess. In crystal grottos revelled a luxuriant folk. Rivers, trees, flowers, and beasts had human wits. Sweeter tasted the wine — poured out by Youth-abundance — a god in the grape-clusters — a loving, motherly goddess upgrew in the full golden sheaves — love’s sacred inebriation was a sweet worship of the fairest of the god-ladies — Life rustled through the centuries like one spring-time, an ever-variegated festival of heaven-children and earth-dwellers. All races childlike adored the ethereal, thousand-fold flame as the one sublimest thing in the world.” ~Novalis

Image result for 1655 – Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens

1655 – Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens.

Image result for arturo toscanini quotes

1867 – Birthday of Arturo Toscanini, Italian-American cellist & conductor

1918 – Deathday of Claude Debussy, French composer

1957 – United States Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” on obscenity grounds.

Selma to Montgomery March - MLK, Purpose & Distance - HISTORY

1965 – Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King Jr. successfully complete their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama

The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction…
Is there a path to expansion…..?

PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA

Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm –

Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $12

Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am CT– (10:30 am 1/2 hour break – 11 am) 12:30 pm CT Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50

Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to approach Aristotle’s gift to humanity……his Categories?

Perhaps , YES! But an initial acquaintance with them can lead out of the confinement of the intellectual concept to an experience of expansion supported by Eurythmy.

In the evening lecture Claudia will introduce the life of the Categories before they became concepts – Bringing the symbols in a sequence of sounds  (called the Evolutionary Sequence ) out of their conceptual form, to life, supported by Eurythmy and examples of poetry.

During the workshop we will enter into the movement of the poetry presented  during the lecture. This will be accessible to Eurythmists as well as to anyone interested in the life of language, poetry and our alphabet.

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society
4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
https://www.rschicago.org/happenings/calendar 
www.rschicago.org/donate

For more info contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.

Juan de Flandes

“Lazarus – Come Forth” – Through The Word & Eurythmy

w/ Rev. Jeana Lee, Mary Ruud & Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Starting at Sundown Friday 31 March 2023
7 pm – 8:30 pm CT at the Christian Community 2135 W. Wilson

Leading Thoughts & Close of Day with Rev. Jeana Lee

Continuing on Lazarus Saturday 1 April 2023
10 am – 12 noon CT
at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4249 N. Lincoln Ave

Night School Check-in w/ Hazel Archer – Eurythmy w/ Mary Ruud

$10 more or less or pay what you will
Please bring a potluck dish to share for the luncheon after the Festival

For more info. contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Hag@rschicago.org

Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Recogniton

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg,

Song-Circle with Velsum, 

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT a hybrid event in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & on zoom

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
www.rschicago.org/donate

PRESENTS:

The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it. Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll

Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance

For more info contact Aline Hanle aline@infinityfoundation.org

Gerald Shepherd

When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.

Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.

This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.

Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.

Nancy Poer

~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor 

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy

1- 3 pm CT – Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom

We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.

Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83663366670?pwd=L292UzlOR1pkZjBXSWpxK1B2b0o1dz09 Meeting ID: 836 6336 6670 / Passcode: 397593

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
*Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate

Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE

Demeter’s letter to Kore

Biography, History, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Speaking with the Stars, Upcoming Events
Demeter and Persephone | Etsy

Listen on ‘I Think Speech’ to Demeter’s Letter to Kore

Dear daughter – Yes, the dark red pomegranate seeds have made you more than Maiden. A dusky stain of transformation marks you with a new tattoo – a karmic calling card for your own re-birth – Mother to yourself.

The Daily Oracle: Friday April 12th – Joanna-Kate Grant

In this stark emergent great time of turning, Persephone – your new name – is your teacher. She who is ever seeking wholeness from out the belly of the Underworld; willingly suffering its trials & lessons, to test, & come to know Herself – to emerge in the fullness of true Being.

Persephone, Queen of the Underworld | Smite Amino
Janaina Mederious

By dark travails, the light is honed. You return to life, sleepy maiden no longer, but Goddess & Queen in your own right – able to discern & strategize destinies web.

PERSEPHONE RETURNS Oil Painting By Dana Zivanovits | absolutearts.com
Dana Zivanovits

You must find the full range of your nature, both the shadow & light – the horror & beauty. As you emerge from this cyclic trek into the Underworld of your karmic shadow-side, you follow Persephone’s example – You become powerful & wise – ready to embrace the full scope of your humanity, adding to your life experiences; & in doing so, you are a child no more, but a sovereign human being. In charge of knowing when to wield the sword – either for benediction or slaughter as the case may be – Ready to receive the consequences & divine messages from every action & reaction, every non-action that pricks you into fuller consciousness.  By your trials & lessons your fruit ripens & matures in its season – able to bear the burden you have wrought – with forgiveness & mercy.

Persephone Paintings | Fine Art America
Kerry Smithe

Whatever Joy or pain you feel, or burden or responsibility you carry, from your ever sprouting fate-full life-story, know that it conveys you to another evolutionary cusp, ever higher, ever awakening. You need not be trapped by a forgetful, carefree slumber that no longer serves; instead you can use the twists & turns of woke dreaming – to graduate from naiveté, thru stark reality, to a willed destiny of your own making.  An organic fuel made from a compost that you consciously regulate for your journey of soul, to help you step with grace from phase to phase, rising & falling & ever emerging into a Spring of fresh new beginnings, a Summer of purpose & action; an Autumn of applied plenty, fortifying you for a regal Winter.

loumargi | Hekate, Goddess of the underworld, Hecate

As Mother & Crone I release the fruited seeds of experience to let them fly into the future as they will. Humanity’s long Winter of soul must end. The ancestors’ stories must become the descendant’s wisdom. What comes next will be of your own choosing & making.

Persephone - Original Oil Painting — Kristina Carroll Art
Kristena Carrol

Let your sufferings be the fertilizer that feeds your new growth, & let your joy draw your hungry limbs upward to embrace life. Trust yourself. Trust each other. Begin again, & again & ever again…

Demeter welcomes Persephone's Return - Painting Dreams
Wendy Andrews

Love is who you are – Go be you –

Xox ~mom

24 March 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Yep that’s Venus shining below the waxing crescent Moon in the west during and after twilight this evening.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

806 – The death-day of Harun al Raschid. Interesting that Rudolf Steiner speaks about this individuality in the Young Doctors Easter Course: Lecture IV, which Steiner gave at the time of the Easter Paradox in 1924.

“…But now just think of the Court of Harun al Raschid, where ancient medicine flourished. The Old Mystery Wisdom, still preserved in tradition, was living in the existing knowledge concerning the being of man. There were two men at that court: Harun al Raschid himself, the organizer of the great academy of spiritual life which grew and developed under his influence; and another, who in earlier times had been an initiate. In the days of Harun al Raschid the initiation did not come to the surface.

Harun al Raschid reincarnated as Lord Bacon of Verulam (1561–1626) and with his kind of thinking which was thoroughly steeped in Arabism, he renewed the natural-scientific thinking, from the West. Such was the path he took in his life between death and rebirth. If you would study Lord Bacon you would find how greatly medicine was influenced thereby. Indeed you would be amazed. The other man, the initiate, was reborn in the soul of Amos Comenius (1592–1670). Comenius’ life was one of aspiration towards the spirit, but he turned everything into intellectual conceptions.

Again, another personality in Arabism — he did not live at exactly the same time as Harun al Raschid, but he played a part in the battle of Zeres de la Frontera — was reborn as Charles Darwin (1809–1882). And so the influences that are working in natural science and especially in medicine, are re-embodiments of ancient conceptions from which Christianity was excluded. Such conceptions did not constitute an evolution of Christianity, but Christianity was excluded as Arabism embraced Europe in its fold. Medicine itself was most of all affected in this sense.”

1830 – Birthday of Robert Hamerling – an Austrian poet and writer . He was one of the most widely read German-speaking authors of his time. His main works include the epic Ahasuerus in Rome (1865), which first made him known to a wide readership, and The King of Sion (1869).

From Rudolf Steiner in: THE PRESENCE OF THE DEAD, GA 154, Appendix II. Robert Hammerling: Poet and Thinker, 26 April 1914, Berlin

“Hamerling’s life and personality are an example of a soul growing out of and beyond its environment, and of an individuality’s development. He was the son of a poor weaver. Since they were completely impoverished, his parents were evicted from their home at a time when Hamerling was not yet capable of even saying “I.” His father was forced to go abroad while his mother remained in the Waldviertel area, in Schonau, with the young boy. There the child experienced the beauties of the Waldviertel region. A scene from that time remained always in his memory of an experience he believed actually gave him his own being. The seven-year-old boy was going down a hill. It was evening, and the sun was setting in the west. Something came toward him, golden, out of the golden sunshine, and Hamerling describes what was shining forth in the golden light as follows:

Among the most significant memories of my boyhood, but also most difficult to convey, are the often strange moods that passed through my soul when I was a roaming boy. In part they came from the moment’s lively impressions and stimulation, usually from nature around me, in part they were waking dreams and premonitions. Speaking about himself, the mystic Jakob Böhme used to say that the higher meaning, the mystical life of the spirit was awakened in him miraculously at the moment when he was dreamily absorbed in gazing at a pewter bowl sparkling in the sunlight. 8 Perhaps every spiritual person has a pewter bowl like Böhme’s as the origin of his real inner awakening. I vividly recall a certain evening when I was about seven years old. I was going down a hill, and the sunset shone toward me like a miracle, a spiritual vision. It filled my heart with an unforgettably strange mood, with a presentiment that today seems to me like a calling, reflecting my future destiny. In high spirits, I hurried toward an unknown destination; yet, at the same time my soul was filled with a melancholy that made me want to cry. If that moment could have been explained out of the surrounding circumstances, if it had not been so completely unique, it would surely not have remained so indelibly in my memory.

Thus, in the poet’s seventh year the poetic and spiritual muse drew near. At that time, the seed for everything that was later to become of this soul was laid into it from out of the cosmos, so to speak. The nice thing is that Hamerling ascribes his poetic calling to such an event, as if it were a miracle the cosmos itself performed on him.

Because of his parents’ poverty, the boy had to be educated at the Cistercian monastery of Zwettl. 10 In return for his school lessons, he had to sing in the monastery choir. At that time, Hamerling was between ten and fourteen years old. He formed a close relationship to a strange personality at the monastery, namely, Father Hugo Traumihler, a person completely given over to mystical contemplation and a strict ascetic life. At that time the boy already possessed a thirst for the beauty of the cosmos and an urge to deepen his soul. You can imagine that he was inspired by the inner experiences Father Traumihler described from his inner contemplation of the secrets of the heart and soul. He was a mystic of a very elementary, primitive kind who nevertheless made a deep impression on Hamerling’s soul.

But it is impossible to talk about the poet Hamerling without mentioning what was such a great part of his longing: the longing to be a great human being.”

Catt Landa

1905 – Deathday of Jules Verne – prolific French author whose writings laid much of the foundation of modern science fiction. (a fav. of mine growing up)

The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction…
Is there a path to expansion…..?

PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA

Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm –

Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $12

Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am CT– (10:30 am 1/2 hour break – 11 am) 12:30 pm CT Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50

Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to approach Aristotle’s gift to humanity……his Categories?

Perhaps , YES! But an initial acquaintance with them can lead out of the confinement of the intellectual concept to an experience of expansion supported by Eurythmy.

In the evening lecture Claudia will introduce the life of the Categories before they became concepts – Bringing the symbols in a sequence of sounds  (called the Evolutionary Sequence ) out of their conceptual form, to life, supported by Eurythmy and examples of poetry.

During the workshop we will enter into the movement of the poetry presented  during the lecture. This will be accessible to Eurythmists as well as to anyone interested in the life of language, poetry and our alphabet.

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society
4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
https://www.rschicago.org/happenings/calendar 
www.rschicago.org/donate

For more info contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.

Juan de Flandes

“Lazarus – Come Forth” – Through The Word & Eurythmy

w/ Rev. Jeana Lee, Mary Ruud & Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Starting at Sundown Friday 31 March 2023
7 pm – 8:30 pm CT at the Christian Community 2135 W. Wilson

Leading Thoughts & Close of Day with Rev. Jeana Lee

Continuing on Lazarus Saturday 1 April 2023
10 am – 12 noon CT
at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4249 N. Lincoln Ave

Night School Check-in w/ Hazel Archer – Eurythmy w/ Mary Ruud

$10 more or less or pay what you will
Please bring a potluck dish to share for the luncheon after the Festival

For more info. contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Hag@rschicago.org

Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Recogniton

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg,

Song-Circle with Velsum, 

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT a hybrid event in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & on zoom

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
www.rschicago.org/donate

PRESENTS:

The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it. Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll

Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance

For more info contact Aline Hanle aline@infinityfoundation.org

Gerald Shepherd

When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.

Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.

This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.

Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.

Nancy Poer

~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor 

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy

1- 3 pm CT – Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom

We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.

Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83663366670?pwd=L292UzlOR1pkZjBXSWpxK1B2b0o1dz09 Meeting ID: 836 6336 6670 / Passcode: 397593

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
*Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate

Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE