All posts by ~hag

About ~hag

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!

Holy Tuesday Insight – Harmony Thru Conflict

Festival,

 

Now the day of Mars has been reached and the conflict flares up in earnest. Goethe’s statement that world history is nothing else than a continuous fight of belief against unbelief touches the truth that is given in all detail during the Tuesday of Holy Week.

All opposition to Christ and hostility to the Spirit has its root in unbelief, in deeply hidden weakness and fear.

To work upon one’s own soul demands the greatest courage.

The wedding garment is the soul become radiant through purification. The oil in the lamps is a picture of the forces of the soul to be won by struggle.

The talents increased by personal effort are the spiritual organs in man brought to further development. To hold the balance between earthly duties and spiritual ideals, gains sovereignty over all earthly conditions. Even if, as at that time, a monster occupies the throne,

He is able to say “Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things which are God’s.”

In the concluding vision of the dividing of mankind, the true quality of inner courage is described:

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

The true path to the spirit shows itself in the power to love. Love is the opposite of fear. All genuine inner development begins with inner courage and finds its goal in love. So His words of spiritual battle end in words of love.

 

 

 

 

Remembering Rudolf Steiner’s Death Day – March 30th

Remembering,

 

Ninety years ago – today – Rudolf Steiner left the physical plane.

“None of us had expected that Rudolf Steiner would succumb to the illness. The mortal sheath, just abandoned by the spirit setting out on its far journey, was resting on the death-bed at the foot of the Christ statue which stood there almost completed. Those who looked at the face of the dead could see what the spirit can make of the body in the life of a truly great man on earth. The sublimity and purity of his features was equal to every test and unsurpassed. Perhaps the death mask, if it is ever reproduced as a picture, will be a means of convincing many.

Again and again one’s gaze turned from the forsaken earthly body to the great Christ figure which points with compelling gesture into the future. The disciple had fallen at the feet of the Master. It was as if Christ were taking the disciple to Himself with sheltering arms while He Himself went forward with unceasing step towards the future of the world. The disciple’s mission was fulfilled. The Master’s brow was radiant with the light of divine world-purposes. When, at the wish of Frau Dr. Steiner, and in the solemnly decorated hall where Dr. Steiner had given most of his great lectures, I was performing the burial service according to the ritual of The Christian Community, a drop of the sprinkled water fell in the centre of the forehead and shone there through the whole service like a sparkling diamond. The light of many candles was reflected in this glittering star – even as the revelations of light from higher worlds had been reflected in his spirit. Thus adorned, the body sank into the coffin. To me it was as if higher Spirits had indicated in an earthly picture what it had been our lot to experience. When the service was at an end, one impression lived mightily within my soul: “This work is now completed. Like a great question it stands there before mankind. If all who belong to that work dedicate their powers to it with single purpose, it will prevail!”

~ Friedrich Rittelmeyer

Festival – Palm Sunday

Festival,

Dear Friends –

Palm Sunday – Matthew 21: 1-11

Christ enters the Holy City on the first day of Holy Week. It is at first an unpretentious sight. He rides through the gate of the city upon a donkey,

followed by His faithful believers. But suddenly, as though he were the God of Spring himself, His entry creates a frenzy in the souls of the people.

It is as though the crowd were seized with the ecstasy of a pagan Spring Festival. Primitive rites are revived when the people cast down palm branches rom the trees. The palm has always ranked as the tree-symbol of the sun which shines in the Spring sky with renewed strength.

The crowd spread His path with the symbol of the sun.

Is He in fact perhaps the Friend and Lord of the Sun who has been promised to man as the great King of the Light?

Is the original spiritual significance of the city of Jerusalem to be released from enchantment, the city which sheltered on Mount Zion one of the oldest sun-sanctuaries of mankind, before it was overshadowed by Mount Moriah, the Mount of the Moon, with the Temple of Solomon?

Has the time of Melchisededek, the great Sun-Initiate, come back?

It would appear as though the Christ had now really found entrance into humanity. The high Sun- Spirit has already lived for three years in a human body and undergone earthly destiny. He held back and kept silence; and whenever He stepped forward He was met with hostility and lack of understanding.

Is all this now to take a new direction? Is destiny to find a solution in an ecstatic jubilation?

No, this is the beginning of the most solemn week in human history. The same men who strew palms and break forth into fervid Hosannas will shriek with fanatical hatred a few days later: “Crucify him! Crucify him!” The Cross on Golgotha, the symbol of death, will companion the palm branch, the symbol of life. It is the Christ Himself who brings about the sudden reversal of feeling. He passes through the ecstatic crowd in silence, with grave countenance. He sees through the acclamations; they are merely superficial, and He aims at deeper levels. His will is directed to something very different.»

~Emil Bock “Holy Week”

And so the Journey Begins

29 March 2015, 2- 4pm at the branch

Palm Sunday – The old Sun –

Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem – The Prophesy fulfilled

Group Eurythmy: Hallelujah in the ‘Lamb of God Heptagram’ with Johanna Rohde

Study of Emil Bock’s “Holy Week”, A Spiritual Guide from Palm Sunday to Easter

 

Attached is a copy of the text, please print it out for yourself.

If you need a copy printed for you or for more information, 

Contact Hazel Archer Ginsberg

 

30 March (Rudolf Steiner’s Death Day) 7-8pm at the branch

Holy Monday

The fig tree, symbol of the old clairvoyance, cursed –

Moon-forces must be renewed -The cleansing of the Temple

Group Eurythmy: Hallelujah in the ‘Lamb of God Heptagram’ with Johanna Rohde

Study of Emil Bock’s “Holy Week”, A Spiritual Guide from Palm Sunday to Easter

 

31 March, 7-8pm at the branch

Holy Tuesday

Conflict with opponents – bending the Mars spirit to His purposes

An Apocalyptic future revealed

Group Eurythmy: Hallelujah in the ‘Lamb of God Heptagram’ with Johanna Rohde

Study of Emil Bock’s “Holy Week”, A Spiritual Guide from Palm Sunday to Easter

 

1 April Fool’s Day, 7-8pm at the branch

Holy Wednesday

Mary Magdalene’s pre-burial anointing, Judas’s betrayal –

the 2 sides of Mercury: Healer /Thief

Group Eurythmy: Hallelujah in the ‘Lamb of God Heptagram’ with Johanna Rohde

Study of Emil Bock’s “Holy Week”, A Spiritual Guide from Palm Sunday to Easter

For insights into this year’s Easter-Tide from Dr. Ross Rentea of the Lili Kolisko institute clink here http://www.koliskoinstitute.org/blog/

Feast Day of Lazarus-John – Easter-Tide Happenings

Festival,

Greetings Dear Friends on this Feast Day of Lazarus-John

“An initiation is veiled by the story of Lazarus in the Gospel of St. John. It has never been understood except by those who knew from their esoteric schools what was concealed behind it. When Christ was informed that Lazarus was ill, He replied: ‘The sickness is not unto death, but that the God in him should be made manifest!’ It means that the Christ-divinity shall be made manifest in and through Lazarus.

Remember that when there was question of the ‘life’ that had fled from Lazarus, and which the sisters Martha and Mary longed to have restored,

Christ answers: ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life!’  The life was to return to Lazarus.

Lazarus meantime beheld the spiritual world. And inasmuch as Christ is the leader of that spiritual world, Lazarus had been filled with the Christ-power and the vision of Christ. Christ poured out His power upon Lazarus and Lazarus arose a new man.

A word in St. John’s Gospel arrests our attention. It is said that the Lord ‘loved’ Lazarus. The same word is used for the disciple ‘whom the Lord loved’.

What does this mean? The Akashic records reveal this to us. Who was Lazarus after he had risen from the dead? He was none other than the writer of the Gospel of St. John, the Lazarus who was initiated by Christ.

Christ poured into the soul of Lazarus the tidings of His own existence, so that the message of the fourth Gospel — the Gospel of St. John — might resound through the world as a description of Christ’s own being. This is also why the disciple John is not mentioned in the Gospel before the story of Lazarus. The individuality of Lazarus had been transformed into the John-individuality, in the sense of the Christian initiation.

Lazarus became an initiate in the new sense of the word, though the old forms were retained in a measure,  a transition was created from the old to the new initiation.”

~Rudolf Steiner – The Gospel of St. John Lecture 7

~   ~   ~

Saturday March 28

10:30 am – 12 noon, study of Easter, Rudolf Steiner’s Watercolor Painting.

For more information, contact Carolyn Arnett at (773) 539-3688

~   ~  ~

Our Holy Week Study starts:

Sunday March 29th, Palm Sunday, 2:00 – 4:00pm

The old Sun – Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem – The Prophesy fulfilled

Group Eurythmy: Hallelujah in the ‘Lamb of God Heptagram’ with Johanna Rohde

Study of Emil Bock’s “Holy Week”, A Spiritual Guide from Palm Sunday to Easter

 

If you would like a copy of the text, or for more information, 

Contact Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Holy Monday March 30th, (Rudolf Steiner’s death day) 7–8pm*

Holy Tuesday March 31st, 7-8pm*

Holy Wednesday April 1st, 7-8pm*

At the Rudolf Steiner Branch, 4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago, IL 60618

Group Eurythmy: Hallelujah in the ‘Lamb of God Heptagram’ with Johanna Rohde

Study of Emil Bock’s “Holy Week, A Spiritual Guide from Palm Sunday to Easter”

 

*Followed by an optional ‘Close of Day’ at 8:15pm at theChristian Community 2135 W. Wilson

 

Maundy Thursday, 6pm ‘Silent Supper’, Study 7pm at the Christian Community 2135 W. Wilson

Good Friday, Study 7pm followed by “The Judas Drama” at 8:15pm with Music &Eurythmy 

at the Christian Community 2135 W. Wilson

 

 

~Erkenntnisfeier~

A Cosmic Recapitulation of the Mystery of Golgotha

 

April 4th, Holy Saturday (Full Lunar Eclipse) 5:00am – 7:00am at the Branch

Group Eurythmy:  Hallelujah in the ‘Lamb of God Heptagram’ withJohanna Rohde

The Inner layers of the Earth, & the Spiritual Significance of Eclipses by Hazel Archer Ginsberg

“The Golden Legend” – Leading into an Artistic Exploration of the Rose Cross Meditation

Group Study of Emil Bock’s “Holy Week” for Holy Saturday

 

April 5th, Easter Sunday 2:00 – 4:00pm at the Branch

Group Eurythmy:  Hallelujah in the ‘Lamb of God Heptagram’ withJohanna Rohde

The Legend of Shambhalla by Richard Dancey

Singing, Group Study of Emil Bock’s “Holy Week” for Easter Sunday

Two Eurythmy Performances by the Midwest Eurythmy Group:

The “Calendar of the Soul” Verse for Easter, Featuring Speech ArtistChrista Macbeth

And The “Hallelujah”

A pot-luck feast to follow

 

Celestial Event – March 2015 – Spring Equinox, New Moon, Total Solar Eclipse

Celestial Event,

 

It’s time to marvel at the cosmic dance of Sun, Moon and Earth during the SPRING EQUINOX.

On March 20, 2015 the plane of Earth’s Equator passes the center of the Sun.

At that instant, the tilt of Earth’s axis doesn’t slant away from, or towards the Sun.

You could say the cosmos stands in equipoise.

 

The two annual equinoxes (Spring and Autumn) are the only times when the subsolar point—

the place on Earth’s surface where the center of the Sun is exactly overhead—is on the Equator, and, consequently, the Sun is at zenith over the Equator. The subsolar point crosses the equator, moving northward at the March equinox and southward at the September equinox.

 

To make this celestial event even more powerful, it is also a NEW MOON, aligning into a TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE! On this day, when the Center of the Sun and the Earth’s equator align, the New Moon will be in-between, blocking the Sun. The last time we had a solar eclipse on the Spring Equinox was 1662!

This unique occurrence is the beginning of a series of four March Equinox/Solar Eclipse occurrences that will happen at 19-year intervals this century, for the first time since the 1600s.

2015, 2034, 2053 and 2072 — each one of these years will see a solar eclipse — a process where our moon temporarily blocks the light of the mighty sun — coinciding with the first day of spring,

the day when the sun evenly distributes its light across the planet’s hemispheres.

Could it be an enhancement of the 4-fold Human Being?

And then dear friends on HOLY SATURDAY, the Full Moon after the Equinox we will experience a LUNAR ECLIPSE – 4 APRIL, 2015! -The 3rd in a series of 4 lunar eclipses (a Tetrad).

NASA research showed that this century, eclipses have a definite pattern – occurring four times every six months during definite periods. From 1600-1900, lunar eclipses didn’t have this pattern.

This pattern of lunar and solar eclipses – unique to our century- seems to be saying that we are defining the next 300 years NOW.

For insights on the spiritual significance of Eclipses from Rudolf Steiner, clink link:

http://www.anthroposophy.org/fileadmin/regions/central/Speaking_of_Eclipses_FINAL.pdf

 

 

Friday 20 March 2015 – New Moon –Spring Equinox

We gather to hold the light as Michaelic Warriors during the Solar Eclipse

4am – 6am at the Branch as part of the

Central Regional Council’s “Speaking with the Stars” Initiative.

Activities include:

Co-creating the Sun Seal in sun-flower seeds

Verse from Rudolf Steiner’s lecture on St John’s Gospel: “In the Primal Beginning was the Word”

A Vernal Imagination Meditation

Group Eurythmy: Hallelujah – 7-pointed Star withJohanna Rohde  

For more info. contact Festivals Coordinator Hazel ArcherGinsberg 773-549-3026