“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story.” ~Homer
The classical Greeks describe the Muse, as ‘She Who Knows All That Is, Ever Was or Will Be’. Mousa is the ancient Greek word for the Muse, the archetypal goddess of the mind, representing the forces of intuition, inspiration, & creative imagination, that leads to wisdom & self-realization.
She is also the power of language in all of its many forms — the power of communication at its most exalted & divine manifestation thru words, song, music, dance & art.
“Happy is he whom the Muses love: sweet flows speech from his mouth.” ~Hesiod
In the seventh century B.C.E. Hesiod sang of Nine Muses, the Mousai: Kalliopeia, muse of epic poetry & the oldest of the nine Muses; Euterpe, muse of music & lyric poetry; Melpomene, muse of singing & tragedy (interesting compo); Erato, muse of mystical & erotic love; Terpsikhore, muse of whirling & ecstatic dance; Urania, muse of astronomy & prophecy; Kleio, muse of history & heroic poetry; Thaleia, muse of comedy & idyllic poetry; & Polyhymnia, muse of sacred hymns and meditation.
The Nine Muses are the daughters of Mnemosyne, the goddess of Memory, & Zeus, the god of the lightning-like flash of inspiration. Sudden & powerful moments of intuition combined with the power of memory give piercing insights into the mysteries of the universe.
Mnemosyne, the power of remembrance, is one of the three elder Muses, along with Melete, the power of practice, study, & meditation, & Aoide, the power of song, chant, & mantra. These Muses are the ancient Divine Muse of the threefold goddess, the symbolic teacher & guide of the Pythian Priestess at the Delphic Oracle. This prophetic priestess, a channel for the Muse, was the most powerful religious & political authority in the Hellenic world for more than two thousand years.
The Pythia’s greatest law sent from the Divine Muse was: ‘Know Thyself’.
Know thyself through meditation, mantra, & memory – the tools of the 3 elder Muses who are the daughters of the goddess Gaia -the Earth, & the god Uranus – the Heavens. This knowing is the connecting principle between heaven &earth. Through meditation, mantra, & memory, we can connect the power of heaven’s creativity with the grounded, sustaining energy of the earth within our own being.
The Divine Muse taught the use of intuition & prophecy as a way to inner development. They fused prophesy & poetry with inspiration — the creative energy welling up from deep within the mind. The word inspiration means breathing into, inhalation, the breath of life, to be filled with the breath of life, to be inspired, to show genius.
The Divine Muse is inspiration — the sacred breath, the life force in the etheric – the formative power that makes consciousness possible. The Muse breathed into Hesiod, “a divine voice to celebrate the things that were and shall be.”
“This draught of flowing nectar, the Muse’s gift, the sweet fruit of the mind,” ~Pindar
Thru the Muse we are taught that vibration & music are the gateways to knowledge of the universe, of reality, & of ourselves. The Pythagoreans structured their colleges as temples dedicated to the powers of the Muse.
Both Aristotle & Plato created shrines to the Muse in their colleges of philosophy.
The word museum originally meant the shrine or temple of the Muse, designating a place of transformation of consciousness, a place of research, scholarship, & learning, a place where sculpture, painting, art, & sacred texts were kept.
“Musikos,” the Greek word for music, meant, “relating to the Muses.”
Plato used musikos to refer to the quality of being, “well educated and versed in things of the mind.” Plato taught that the concept of music encompassed all that relates to the mind. He believed in revealed knowledge as a path to knowing ultimate truth, describing the channel of flowing creativity between the human & divine as the Muse herself.
Within our thinking there are unused areas of potential energy & psychic awareness. The power to awaken these dormant regions is within us. We can open the gate to wisdom & consciousness through study, meditation, singing, & dancing — the rituals of the Muse who lies hidden in our memory, waiting to lead us to the highest states of knowledge, blessedness, & being. Once the Muse reveals the truths within us, we understand who we are & what we are supposed to do.
“[The Muses] are all of one mind, their hearts are set upon song,
and their spirit is free from care.” ~Hesiod
The Muse is not a mythological figment of the ancient past, she is the inner source of wisdom & the force of creativity within our own minds. Rise in your thinking to meet the Muse within & she will come. ~hag
16 Febrauary 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
1834 – Birthday of Ernst Haeckel, a promoter of scientific racism who embraced the idea of Social Darwinism. Haeckel was also a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist, & artist who discovered, described & named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, & coined many terms in biology, including ecology. Haeckel promoted & popularized Charles Darwin’s work in Germany. The published artwork of Haeckel includes over 100 detailed, multi-color illustrations of animals & sea creatures. See Haeckel, the Riddles of the World and Theosophy, by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, 5th October 1905
1924 – Rudolf Steiner began the Karmic Relationships lecture today in Dornach GA 235-240 – KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS I, GA 235, Lecture I, 16 February 1924, Dornach
“I now wish to begin to speak to you of the laws and conditions of human destiny, which, as you know, it has become customary to describe as karma. Karma, however, cannot be seen clearly unless we are prepared to learn to know the different kinds of universal law and universal activity…Both when we try to comprehend the World’s phenomena and when we wish to understand the phenomena of human life, we are wont to speak of “causes and effects.” Especially in science nowadays, people are accustomed to speak quite generally of “causes and effects.” Yet it is precisely this habit which leads into the greatest difficulties, in face of the true reality. For if we speak in this way, we are leaving out of account the variety of forms in which “cause and effect” actually occur in the universe…”
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
The Categories of Aristotle: A process of contraction…exploring a path to expansion…
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.
The Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Resurrection
with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg,
Insights about Mary Magdalene with Faith DiVecchio,
Song-Circle with Velsum,
Eurythmy – & an artistic break out session
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
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
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.
~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
Enjoyed the post.
Thank you.
Got to love those Muses…
Thanks for tuning in
xox
“Orpheus, the mythic figure of the Greek epoch, was the offspring of a Muse, the son of Calliope, not of a physical mother but of a supersensible reality which had never had any previous connection with the physical and material.
But as the son of Calliope and nothing more than that, Orpheus could have given expression only to manifestations of the supersensible world. In keeping with the nature of the age in which he lived, it was also his mission to give expression to what would be of service to physical life in that epoch. Hence he was not only a mouthpiece for the Muse, for Calliope, as in much earlier times the Rishis were merely mouthpieces for supersensible Powers, but his own life gave expression to the supersensible in such a way that the physical world also was important to his life. His teaching was connected with and suited to the climate of Greece, to what was part of outer nature in Greece — and so Orpheus was made the son of Oeagrus, the Thracian River-God.
This shows us that to the Greeks what mattered most in their view was what was living in Orpheus’ soul. In those days men were characterised by the quality of their souls, by their spiritual value, not, as in later times, by saying: he is the son of so-and-so, or, he comes from such and such a town. It is very interesting to see how deeply involved the Greeks felt in the destiny of a man such as Orpheus, who descended on the one side from a Muse and on the other from a Thracian River-God. Unlike the ancient prophets, Orpheus was subject not only to supersensible influences but to material influences as well — to all the influences exercised by the physical-material world.
Now we know that man consists of several members: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego, the ‘I’. A man such as Orpheus, descended from a Muse — you now know what that means — was still able to see into the spiritual world; but on the other hand, his capacity for experiencing the spiritual world was weakened by the life he led on the physical plane as the son of his father, the Thracian River-God.
The Leaders in the second and third post-Atlantean culture-epochs who became mouthpieces for utterances of the spiritual worlds were able to perceive their own etheric body separated from the physical. In the civilisations where ancient clairvoyance prevailed — and it was the same even among the Celts — when a man was to be made aware of something he was called upon to communicate to his fellow-men, it was revealed to him in this way: his etheric body emerged from the physical body and became the bearer of forces which streamed down into it. If those who proclaimed the utterances of the spiritual worlds were men, their etheric bodies were female and they consequently saw in female form whatever communicated messages to them from the spiritual worlds.
Now it was also the purpose of the legend to show that although Orpheus was in direct contact with the spiritual Powers, as the son of a Thracian River-God there was always the possibility that he would be unable to retain what was revealed to him through his own etheric body. The more thoroughly he made himself at home in the physical world and lived his life as a son of his country, the more did his power of clairvoyance recede. The story relates that Eurydice, the transmitter of his revelations, his soul-bride, was torn away from him through the bite of an adder — a picture of his human failings — and carried off to the underworld. He could win her back only by passing through an Initiation. — Whenever we are told of a journey into the underworld, an Initiation is meant. — In order to win back his bride, Orpheus must pass through an Initiation. But he was already too closely enmeshed in the physical world. He had indeed acquired the capacity to make his way into the underworld, but on his return, when his eyes again encountered the sunlight, Eurydice vanished from his sight. Why was this? It was because on seeing the sunlight he did something that was forbidden him: he turned and looked back. That is to say, he disobeyed a strict command given him by the God of the underworld, namely, that physical man, living on the physical plane, must not look back beyond the point of time I have indicated, to the period of the macrocosmic experiences of childhood; if these experiences were to penetrate into the consciousness normal in later life, they would give rise to clairvoyance in its ancient form. Hence the command of the God of the underworld that no man may seek to penetrate the mysteries of childhood, to remember where the Threshold is fixed. — But this was what Orpheus did, and he consequently lost the faculty of clairvoyance.
Something of great delicacy and subtlety in connection with Orpheus is set before us in this story of the loss of Eurydice. One consequence is that man is sacrificed to the physical world. With a nature still deeply rooted in the spiritual he is also, partially, the sort of being which it is his destiny to become on the physical plane. And so all the forces of the physical plane press in upon him and he loses Eurydice, his own innocent soul — which it is the fate of modern man also to lose. These forces tear Orpheus to pieces; in a sense, he is sacrificed.
What is it, then, that Orpheus experienced as representative of the transition between the third and fourth epochs of post-Atlantean culture? In the first place he experienced the stage of consciousness which the child leaves behind — the connection with the Macrocosm. This does not pass over into his conscious life and therefore in his essential being man is torn to pieces and killed by life on the physical plane which in the real sense begins at the point of which we have been speaking.
And now keep in mind this man living on the physical plane; he is normally able to remember back only to a certain point of time; beyond this lie the three years of earliest childhood. With this thread of memory he is so enmeshed in the physical plane that, in his own being, he cannot endure it and he is torn to pieces. Thus it is with the true spirit of man to-day — here is a proof of how deeply he is enmeshed in matter. This is the spirit which in Pauline Christianity is called the ‘Son of Man’. Here is a concept which you must grasp — the concept of the Son of Man who can be found in a human being onwards from the point in his life to which his later memory extends, and includes everything he has acquired from the civilisation around him. Keep this ‘man’ in your mind, and then picture to yourselves what he might become if there were added to him all that presses in upon him from the Macrocosm in the first three years of his childhood. This could be a foundation only, because at that stage the developed human ‘I’ is not yet present. But if it did merge into the consciousness of a developed ‘I’, we should witness a happening comparable with what took place at the Baptism in the Jordan at the moment when the Spirit descended from above into Jesus of Nazareth: the three innocent years of early childhood merged with the rest of the human being. That is the immediate fact. And the consequence was that this innocent childhood-life, as it sought to develop on the physical Earth, could evolve for three years only — as is indeed always the case — and then met its end on Golgotha. It could not merge with what man becomes at the point in time from which in later life his memory normally begins.
Think what it would be like if; in one man, we saw mingled together all the interconnections with the Macrocosm which show themselves dimly and indistinctly in the early years of childhood but which cannot really light up in the child because he is as yet without Ego-consciousness. Think further, and picture to yourselves how, if the reality did dawn in this way in a later consciousness, something would take shape which has its origin, not in man’s own nature but in the depth of those cosmic worlds out of which we are born. If you think of all this you will get an idea of the meaning of the words spoken in connection with the event portrayed as the descent of the Dove: ‘This is my beloved Son; this day have I begotten him.’ That means: Here the Christ is incarnated, begotten, in Jesus of Nazareth, born in him at the moment of the Baptism by John. In the Christ there was present, in its highest form, the consciousness otherwise belonging only to the early years of childhood; now, mingling with it, there was feeling of oneness with the Cosmos which a child would feel if it could be fully aware of its experiences during the first three years. In that case there would be still another meaning in the words: ‘I and the Father’ — that is, the cosmic Father — ‘are one’.
If you ponder deeply about these things you will get an inkling of what was experienced by St. Paul as a first, basic element in the revelation near Damascus and finds expression in the beautiful words: ‘Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven.’ Among many meanings of this saying there is the one indicated by St. Paul: Not I, but Christ in me — the Christ, that is, who has a macrocosmic consciousness such as a child would have if it could somehow combine the consciousness belonging to the first three years with the Ego-consciousness of later life. In the normal man of to-day these two forms of consciousness are separate: indeed they must be separate, for they are incompatible. Nor were they any more compatible in Christ Jesus Himself; after those three years, death was bound to supervene and to occur in the circumstances as they actually were in Palestine. These circumstances were not matters of chance but came about because these two lived within each other: the Son of God (which is man from the moment of his birth until the development of the Ego-consciousness) and the Son of Man (which is what he is after Ego-consciousness has been attained). The events which then culminated in the happenings in Palestine were the outcome of the living together of the Son of God and the Son of Man.”
The Son of God and the Son of Man. The Sacrifice of Orpheus
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA124/English/RSP1985/19110116p02.html
I love this quote.
I shared part of it on Marie Steiner von Sivers birthday a few years ago.
It is such a well constructed and integrated display of knowledge about the fact that we live for the first three years of life in this world as a Son/Daughter of God, and then our earthly memory begins. All the paragraphs were needed for the full explanation. This also helps explain why Christ could only live for three years on Earth in a physical body. The Son of God and the Son of Man were a very closely connected dichotomy.
Yes, & the Orpheus reference is interesting in that context as well.
It is; entirely. One can go from the experience of the Bath Kol, which Jesus experienced when he was 24 years old, and proceed right into the domain of Orpheus. Thus, the Underworld was/is a very real experience in the transitional life of what causes memory to begin. Consider that Jesus was an entirely supersensible birth whose Mother was the incarnation of the Divine Sophia, and whose father was a carpenter. Jesus learned the carpentry trade while accompanying his father on many jobs. In the time of Orpheus, he learned to navigate the boat on the River Thrace.
I remember experiencing the Bath Kol when I was still five years old, and then, in seeing that the spiritual world was now closed to me, I had no recourse but to turn to the world I was living in. Thus, the realm of Orpheus became my domain as I waited to see what might transpire. Then, my initiation occurred into the realm of the three-dimensional world representation. It was like a magic wand was being waved. Thus, Orpheus said to go forth, and bring the Christ into objective awareness. Even evolution has redeemed both Orpheus and Eurydice, as soul-mates. The secret is the new Clairvoyance, which we stand on the threshold of receiving.