Brigid’s Quickening Comet Eclipse

10 February 2017 – Astro-Weather:

Tonight is the Full Quickening Moon, Sacred to the Celtic Goddess Brigid – powered this evening by the constellation of Leo; with the Sun in Aquarius. It is also a Lunar Eclipse, which occurs at 6:43pm CST. This ‘Penumbral’ Eclipse can be understood as a ‘shadow eclipse’. And there is a lot of power hidden in the shadow. Yes, the shadow knows! We all have a shadow side lurking within, a term used by Carl Jung to describe our unconscious self. The Shadow follows us everywhere, there’s no getting away from it. It’s hard to grasp & yet we must strive to embrace this part of ourselves & bring the dark into the light, to release the energy locked up in the illusions of fear.

This shadow eclipse is the kick-off for ‘The Great American Eclipse’ on August 21, 2017 – a Total Solar Eclipse that will sweep across the mainland of the US for the first time in 137 years.

We have 2 pairs of eclipses this year – one pair this month, the other in August. So tonight’s eclipse is the opening act in a 4-act play:

1. Penumbral Lunar Eclipse Full Moon: 10 February 2017
2. Annular Solar Eclipse New Moon: 26 February 2017
3. Partial Lunar Eclipse Full Moon: 7 August 2017
4. TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE: 21 August 2017, ‘The Great American Eclipse’

Act Two will occur two weeks from now, on 26 February 2017, when we will have an Annular Solar Eclipse New Moon.

Rudolf Steiner was born on 25 February 1861, but because he almost died, they baptized him on 27 February, which was ‘officially’ recorded as his birthday. So this middle day 26 February in Steiner’s birth story is significant. The Solar eclipse, on Sunday February 26th 2017 indicates a new phase of Steiner’s influence, which is especially potent for the next six months! We will celebrate Steiner’s birthday along with the solar eclipse by analyzing his horoscope.

Astrologer Victoria Martin will expound on some classic interpretations of Rudolf Steiner’s Birth chart – For instance did you know he was born on a Full Moon, near the zenith of the sky aligned to Saturn? Victoria will also go further by adding the fixed stars, which according to Brian Gray at Steiner College, are basic components in Astrosophy.

Victoria will also do 3-minute readings for each participant to see where their birthdays fit in Steiner’s horoscope!

This can be even more precise if the entire horoscope of participants is available, so please email your date, time, and place of birth to viccimartin@gmail.com.

We can also look into the 2017 trends if there is interest! And Hazel Archer Ginsberg will give a brief overview of the phases in Rudolf Steiner’s life.

 $10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society 4249 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago IL. 60618. MAP

There is another celestial event taking place this evening – we will have a cosmic visitor – Comet 45P –- showing up in the heavens at the same time as the lunar eclipse/full moon. Comet 45P is a short-period comet discovered by the team of Minoru Honda on 3 December 1948. It revolves around the Sun every 5.25 years. We have experienced 13 visits from 45P since its discovery.

Think back  about 5 years ago to 2011-2012 – pivotal years to be sure. What was going on for you then? How have you changed since then? Another key time period associated with this comet is 1995-1996.

Also think back to 31 December 2016 which is when Comet 45P reached exact contact with its star (& ours), the Sun. Because of this timing, it was dubbed ‘the New Year Comet’. This clearly makes Comet 45P a bringer of energies that will affect all of 2017 – a critical year for humanity, similar to the turning point of 2012, which also included a visit from Comet 45P.

It will return in 2022. What will life on earth be like then?

Comet 45P is GREEN in color, which resonates with the green of the Earth as well as the heart chakra. It’s about connecting the core of earth with the center of our heart in light & love.

Comet 45P is in front of the constellation Hercules now & will be in Hercules on the day of its closest approach on February 11. Then it will fade as it passes through the constellations Corona Borealis, Boötes, Canes Venatici & Ursa Major, moving into Leo by the end of February. The myth of Hercules will have special meaning now & for the rest of the year.

From an article by Dr Elizabeth Vreede:

“The Comet represents an element that does not wholly enter the usual sphere of cosmic law. Although they still contain a trace of the direct working of spiritual powers, indeed, of the very highest — the Seraphim and Cherubim. Before ordinary law may be broken through, the very highest power and insight is required. The various comets, indeed, are agents of a very special nature in our planetary system, their polar antithesis being in the moons.

Just as the moons are a kind of corpse which the planetary system trails along with it, so, on the other side, the comets may be spoken of as constant purifiers of the spiritual atmosphere within the solar system.
In earlier times men thought of them as the “scavengers of God,”
and many superstitions have gathered around them. To the eye of Spirit, too, the mission of the comets is perpetually to expel impure astral forces from the Cosmos or to introduce new impulses.”

Click here for a video of the Comet 45P’s path through the constellations.

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

547 – Death day of St. Scholastica, foundress of the women’s branch of Benedictine Monasticism. The patron saint of nuns, & convulsive children. She is invoked against storms & rain. The most commonly told story about her is that she would go & visit her twin brother Benedict of Nursia near his abbey once a year, They would spend the day praying & discussing sacred texts. Sensing the time of her death was drawing near, Scholastica asked him to stay with her for the evening so they could continue their discussions. Not wishing to break his Rule, Benedict refused, insisting that he needed to return to his cell. At that point, Scholastica closed her hands in prayer, & after a moment, a wild storm started outside. Benedict asked, “What have you done?”, to which she replied, “I asked you & you would not listen; so I asked my God & he did listen. So now go off, if you can, leave me & return to your monastery.” Benedict was unable to return to his monastery, & they spent the night in discussion. Three days later, from his cell, her twin saw her soul leaving the earth & ascending to heaven in the form of a shining white dove

630 – Feast Day of St. Austrebertha. A popular legend states that one day, while looking for the donkey whose task it was to carry the laundry of the monks to the convent, she came across a wolf. The wolf admitted to killing the donkey & begged for forgiveness. Austrebertha forgave the wolf but commanded him to carry the laundry himself, a task that the wolf performed for the rest of its life

1258 – Baghdad falls to the Mongols, & the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed

1306 – In front of the high altar of Greyfriar’s Church in Dumfries, Robert the Bruce murders John Comyn sparking revolution in the Wars of Scottish Independence

1355 – The St Scholastica Day riot breaks out in Oxford, England, leaving 63 scholars & 130 locals dead

1567 – Lord Darnley, second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, is found strangled following an explosion at the Kirk o’ Field house in Edinburgh, Scotland, a suspected assassination

1763 – French & Indian War: The Treaty of Paris ends the war & France cedes Quebec to Great Britain

1814 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Champaubert ends in French victory over the Russians & the Prussians

1920 – Józef Haller de Hallenburg performs a symbolic wedding of Poland to the sea, celebrating restitution of Polish access to open sea

1940 – The Soviet Union begins mass deportations of Polish citizens from occupied eastern Poland to Siberia

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Geraldine Balen

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~May I stand in the midst of celestial fire
Until my heart is molten golden
May I walk on earth radiant in thought
My body curve toward the will of heart
A heliotropic dance propelling
My breath in calm waters
Toward destiny
~hag

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Some thoughts about eclipses :

In “Human Questions and Cosmic Answers” Rudolf Steiner states: “An eclipse of the sun is due to the fact that the moon comes between the sun and the earth, cutting off the rays of the sun.” At the time of a solar eclipse, something totally different takes place on the earth. Usually the rays of the sun penetrate down to the earth & the forces or rays of our will stream out to meet the sun. At an eclipse, our will forces radiate out into the darkness, & there is a period of time, short as it is, in which all that is of the nature of human will, good will as well as ill intention etc, flows out into universal space in an abnormal way since it is not met & offset by the sun. Ordinarily, the physical sunlight unites with the radiations of human will streaming towards it. When there is an eclipse, the forces of will flow unhindered into cosmic space.

Steiner describes this as a ‘safety valve’ a way to ‘let off steam’. All those human will forces, the beautiful as well as the ugly, are able to leave the earths atmosphere.

The old initiates knew these things. They saw that at such a moment all the unbridled impulses & instincts of humanity surge out into the cosmos. And they gave their pupils the following explanation. They said: “Under normal conditions the evil impulses of will which are sent out into the cosmos by human beings are burned up and consumed by the rays of the sun, so that they can injure only man himself, but can do no universal harm. When, however, there is an eclipse of the sun, opportunity is given for the evil which is willed on earth to spread over the cosmos. An eclipse is a physical event behind which there lies a significant spiritual reality”.

And again, when there is an eclipse of the moon, the man of today merely says: ‘Now the earth comes between the sun & the moon; so we see the shadow cast on the moon by the earth.’ That is the physical explanation. But in this case also the ancient initiates knew that a spiritual reality was behind this physical fact. They knew that when there is an eclipse of the moon, cosmic thoughts stream through the darkness down to the earth; & that such thoughts have a closer relationship with the subconscious  or shadow side than with the conscious side of the human being.

The old initiates often made use of a certain simile when speaking to their pupils. “Visionaries and dreamers love to go for rambles by moonlight, when the moon is full. There are, however, certain people who have no wish to receive the good thoughts coming to them from the cosmos, but who, on the contrary, are desirous of getting hold of evil, diabolical thoughts. Such people will choose the moment of a lunar eclipse for their nocturnal wanderings”.

So as Steiner said, eclipses of the sun & moon, recurring as they do in the course of every year, can be looked at as “safety-valves” -there to avert danger, to provide an outlet at the right moment. One of the safety-valves which makes its appearance in the cosmos is the solar eclipse, which serves the purpose of carrying out into space in a ‘Luciferic way‘, the ‘evil’ that spreads over the earth, in order that ‘evil may work havoc in a wider, less concentrated sphere’.

The other safety-valve, the lunar eclipse, exists for the purpose of allowing the evil thoughts which are present in the cosmos to approach those human beings who are desirous of being possessed by them. People ruled by their unconscious selves. These facts are just as real as the attraction of a magnet for small particles of iron. Such are the forces at work, in the cosmos.

Rudolf Steiner also gave us hints as to how to come to terms with ‘evil’. He reveals that the gods themselves called their opponents into being. Lucifer is an Archangel which has stayed behind in evolution & Ahriman is a retarded member of the Archai.

Humanity, striving toward Freedom, stands as the 10th Hierarchy & has the task of integrating the gifts of Nature & Spirit, while accepting the responsiblity & finding the strength to lead evil (i.e.: Lucifer & Ahriman) back to the good.

One of my family’s traditions: In Italy, the Moon was represented by a mirror, so during a lunar eclipse, we would cloud the mirror with our breath, a very old tradition. It was believed that a wolf swallowed the Moon during an eclipse & that by breathing on the mirror we would cause the wolf to cough it up & return it to the sky.

Many cultures have these kind of imaginations. The Vikings tell a tale about two wolves who wish to eat the Sun & Moon. Skoll (repulsion) goes after the Sun & Hati, running ahead of the Sun, goes after the Moon. When either are caught, there is an eclipse. When this happens, the people on Earth rush to rescue the Sun or Moon by making as much noise as they can in hopes of scaring off the wolves.

Today in the modern world, we must take up the active sword & protective shield of Michael, & stand as warriors against the dark.
See you there
xox

~ Hazel Archer Ginsberg

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DIGITAL Pandora: Imaging HOPE by Gretchen Steele

Art Opening 7 pm – 9 pm Friday February 17th, 2017 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society 4249 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago IL. 60618. MAP

A Performance Art Exhibit & Gallery Reception with an opportunity for participants to create their own collage art to be shown at the Closing exhibit March 31st, 2017

DIGITAL Pandora: Imaging HOPE is a multi-media art exhibit including work inspired by the myth of Pandora as a narrative of hope – by Gretchen Steele

The exhibit includes multi-media collages on paper, large-scale (5’ x 5’) collaged fabric prayer cloths, a performance art piece titled Embodied Compass ll: Reliquary Immersion, and a participatory SEA (Socially Engaging Artwork) inviting viewers to collaborate in a collaged community mural using a images (from the artist’s photo bank of the previous performance piece, Embodied Compass l: Digital Pandora) and marker-based drawing materials.

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An evening Discourse &  Full day Workshop with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg at

Fostering Sustainable Agriculture through Research, Education and Policy since 1984

What is Anthroposophy?

Friday March 3rd 2017,  Potluck Social 5:30 pm  Lecture –7 pm – 9 pm

A Hands-on Discourse with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

What can the human being (anthropos) of today do to recognize our inherent wisdom (sophia) to access the source of spiritual knowledge, for our own inner development, and for the evolution of the earth and all of humanity?

What would it be like to support each other in community, as we strive to penetrate the mystery of our relationship with the spiritual world?

How does this ‘Spiritual Science’ built on the research of Rudolf Steiner, speak to the riddles of existence: our artistic needs, the truth of karma, the mystery of evil, life after death and so much more?

Come Explore this Modern Path of Initiation with:

Hazel Archer-Ginsberg – Festivals Coordinator & Council Member of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch, and the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society. Founder of Reverse Ritual – Understanding Anthroposophy Through the Rhythms of the Year– Presenter, Poet, & Trans-denominational Minister.

Register here

Also:

 Saturday March 4th 2017 –

A Experiential Three Part Workshop* with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity

Some of the topics treated in this experiential workshop are: The nature of the brain, the development of speech, angelic beings, ancient language, Zarathustra, Buddha, & Christ.

‘The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity: Some Results of Spiritual-Scientific Research into Human History and Development’ consists of three sections. Each section was originally a lecture (6, 7, & 8 June 1911) but was subsequently reworked by Steiner & cast into the form of an essay.  It is available without a fee at Rudolf Steiner Archives 

Session #1 – 10 am – 12 noon:
• Introductions
• The divine wisdom working in the human being in the 1st three years of life.
• Through inner striving we can contact again and consciously build on this wisdom which is connected to the Christ impulse.
• Activity- Biography work: Our 1st conscious memory – a preview of the “I”.

Noon – 1:30 pm – Lunch

Session #2 – 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm:
• The childlike condition of humanity in ancient times, directed by higher spiritual beings.
• A look into the evolution of these guiding spirits –progressive as well as regressive –
• Revealing the necessity of the ‘two kinds of evil’.
• The importance of Spiritual Science to avoid error.
• Activity – Labyrinth Walk

3:30 pm – 4 pm – Break

Session #3 – 4 pm – 6 pm:
• A survey of the Post-Atlantean age, our present epoch.
• The Christ connection with the progressive spiritual beings
• Modern science as the work of the regressive spiritual beings
• A peek into the future
• Activity – The Golden Legend & The Rose Cross Mediation: An artistic rendering

*(Workshops can be taken as a whole or individually, details to follow)

Register here

Michael Fields W2493 County Rd ES
East Troy, WI 53120, USA

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good sore

6 February 2017 – Astro-Weather: Venus appears brilliant in the early evening sky starting a half-hour after sunset. The Goddess of Love will remain the evening sky’s brightest point of light through late March, 10 times brighter than the second-brightest object, Jupiter. Venus lies among the background stars of Pisces the Fishes, slightly east of that constellation’s Circlet asterism.

David Borden

The sky’s biggest asterism (informal star pattern) is the Winter Hexagon, & the Moon shines inside it tonight & tomorrow night. Start with brilliant Sirius at the Hexagon’s bottom. Going clockwise from there, march through Procyon, Pollux & Castor, Menkalinan & Capella high up, Aldebaran down to Capella’s lower right, down to Rigel in Orion’s foot, & back to Sirius. Betelgeuse sparkles inside the Hexagon, south of the Moon this evening.

The Moon reaches perigee, the closest point in its orbit around Earth, at 10:02 am CST – 229,172 miles away from us

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

628 – Feast day of Amandus, the patron saint of all who produce beer: brewers, innkeepers & bartenders. He is also the patron of vine growers, vintners & of the Boy Scouts. He was of noble birth but at the age of twenty he became a monk against the wishes of his family. From there he went to became a pupil of bishop Austregisilus. There he lived in solitude in a cell for fifteen years, living on no more than bread & water.

After a pilgrimage to Rome, he was made a missionary bishop in France, he evangelized the pagan inhabitants of Ghent, later extending his field of operations to all of Flanders. Initially he had little success, suffering persecution & undergoing great hardships. However, after performing a miracle (bringing back to life a hanged criminal) the attitude of the people changed & he made many converts. He founded a monastery at Elnon where he served as abbot of for four years. Amandus was made a bishop in 628.

Returning to France in 630, he angered Dagobert I by attempting to have the king amend his life. In spite of the intervention of Saint Acarius, Amand was expelled from the kingdom. Later Dagobert asked him to return & tutor the heir to the throne. Amand however declined. In 633, Amandus founded two monasteries in Ghent; one at Blandinberg, & the other named for St. Bavo. His next missionary task was among the Slavic people of the Danube valley in present-day Slovakia but this was unsuccessful. Amand went to Rome & reported to the Pope. While returning to France, he is said to have calmed a storm at sea. In 639, he built an abbey near Tournay

1347 – Birthday of Dorothea of Montau, the guardian of the country of the Teutonic Knights & patron saint of Prussia. Born to a wealthy farmer from Holland, she was married at the age of 16 to the swordsmith Adalbrecht of Danzig (Gdańsk), an ill-tempered man in his 40s. Almost immediately after marrying she began to experience visions. Her husband had little patience with her spiritual experiences & abused her. Later, both made pilgrimages to Cologne, Aachen, & Einsiedeln. While Dorothea, with her husband’s permission, was on pilgrimage to Rome, he died in 1389. Of their nine children eight died. The surviving daughter, Gertrud, joined the Benedictines.

In the summer of 1391 Dorothea moved to Marienwerder (Kwidzyn), & with the blessing of the Teutonic Order, established a hermit’s cell against the wall of the cathedral. She never left that cell for the rest of her life.

Dorothea led a very austere life. Numerous visitors sought her advice & consolation, & she had visions & revelations

1465 – Birthday of Scipione del Ferro, Italian mathematician & theorist

1582 –Birthday of Mario Bettinus, Italian mathematician, astronomer, & philosopher

1612 – Birthday of  Antoine Arnauld, French mathematician, theologian, & philosopher

1695 – Birthday of  Nicolaus II Bernoulli, Swiss-Russian mathematician & theorist

1778 – American Revolutionary War: In Paris the Treaty of Alliance & the Treaty of Amity are signed by the United States & France signaling official recognition of the new republic

1748 – Birthday of Adam Weishaupt, German philosopher & founder of the Illuminati. After Pope Clement XIV’s suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, Weishaupt became a professor of canon law, a position that was held exclusively by the Jesuits until that time. In 1775 Weishaupt was introduced to the empirical philosophy of Johann Georg Heinrich Fede. Both Feder &Weishaupt would later become opponents of Kantian idealism.

“At a time, however, when there was no end of making game of and abusing secret societies, I planned to make use of this human foible for a real and worthy goal, for the benefit of people. I wished to do what the heads of the ecclesiastical and secular authorities ought to have done by virtue of their offices…” ~ Adam Weishaupt

On 1 May 1776 Weishaupt founded the “Illuminati” in the Electorate of Bavaria. He adopted the name of “Brother Spartacus” within the order. The character of the society was an elaborate network of spies & counter-spies. Each isolated cell of initiates reported to a superior, whom they did not know: a party structure that was effectively adopted by some later groups.

Weishaupt was initiated into the Masonic Lodge “Theodor zum guten Rath“, at Munich in 1777. His project of “illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason, which will dispel the clouds of superstition and of prejudice” was an unwelcome reform. He used Freemasonry to recruit for his own quasi-masonic society, with the goal of “perfecting human nature” through re-education to achieve a communal state with nature, freed of government & organized religion. Presenting their own system as pure masonry, Weishaupt & Adolph Freiherr Knigge, who organized his ritual structure, greatly expanded the secret organization.

Weishaupt’s character & intentions have been variously assessed: from those such as the Abbé Barruel & John Robison who regarded him as a ‘human devil’ & saw his mission as one of malevolent destructiveness, to those who view him as a humane & benign, albeit willful, social reformer. Writing on this topic, Dr. Tony Page comments: “Weishaupt’s plan was to educate Illuminati followers in the highest levels of humanity and morality (basing his teachings on the supremacy of Reason, allied with the spirit of the Golden Rule of not doing to others what one would not wish done to oneself), so that if Illuminati alumni subsequently attained positions of significance and power (such as in the fields of education and politics), they could exert a benevolent and uplifting influence upon society at large. His project was utopian and naively optimistic, and he himself was certainly not without flaws of character – but neither he nor his plan was evil or violent in and of themselves. It is one of the deplorable and tragic ironies of history that a man who tried to inculcate virtue, philanthropy, social justice and morality has become one of the great hate-figures of 21st-century ‘conspiracy’ thinking.”

After Weishaupt was exiled, he received the assistance of Duke Ernest II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg & lived in Gotha writing a series of works on illuminism, including A Complete History of the Persecutions of the Illuminati in Bavaria (1785), A Picture of Illuminism (1786), An Apology for the Illuminati (1786), & An Improved System of Illuminism (1787).

After Weishaupt’s Order of Illuminati was banned & its members dispersed, it left behind no enduring traces of an influence, not even on its own former members, who went on in the future to develop in quite different directions.

1820 – The first 86 African American immigrants sponsored by the American Colonization Society depart New York to start a settlement in present-day Liberia

1895 – Birthday of Babe Ruth

1918 – British women over the age of 30 get the right to vote

1951 – The Broker, a Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train derails near Woodbridge Township, New Jersey. The accident kills 185 people & injures over 500 more. The wreck is one of the worst rail disasters in American history

1952 – Elizabeth II becomes queen regnant of the United Kingdom & the other Commonwealth realms upon the death of her father, George VI. At the exact moment of succession, she was in a tree house at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya

1959 – Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments files the first patent for an integrated circuit

1959 – At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile is accomplished

1976 – In testimony before a United States Senate subcommittee, Lockheed Corporation president Carl Kotchian admits that the company had paid out approximately $3 million in bribes to the office of Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka

1989 – The Round Table Talks start in Poland, thus marking the beginning of the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe

1996 – Birgenair Flight 301 crashed off the coast of the Dominican Republic, & all 189 people inside the airplane are killed. This is the worst accident/incident involving a Boeing 757

2012 – A 6.9 magnitude earthquake hits near the central Philippines off the coast of Negros Island causing at least 151 deaths & injuring 112 others

2013 – A 8.0 magnitude earthquake hits the Solomon Islands killing 101 people & injuring 117 others

2016 – A 6.4 magnitude earthquake hits southern Taiwan, killing at least 138 people & injuring over 530 more

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Catherine Molland

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Good sore
Like wiggling a loose tooth…
The shoveling & sledding
Loosening the whole of me
Thump blood mingling
With the elementals awakening
~hag

***

Helena Nelson Reed

Mysteries of the Celtic Goddess Brigid

Thursday February 9th 2017 -7 pm
at the Theosophical Society in America
1926 North Main Street
Wheaton, IL 60187

Invoking the Practical Alchemy of the Celtic Triple Goddess Brigid 
To Purify, Awaken, & Galvanize Your Head, Heart, and Hands

Brigid’s festival is the 1st of the cross-quarter days in the wheel of the year, a time of spiritual re-dedication and initiation. Brigid invites us to forge and shape ourselves, as the tools of our own destiny. Come Renew Yourself. Together we will thaw the winter & rouse the mysteries growing within…

Hazel Archer Ginsberg is a Spiritual Midwife, and Trans-denominational Minister, working in an eclectic style that inspires connections – initiating us into the magic, waiting to be revealed, in the cycle of the seasons. Festivals Coordinator of the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society. Lecturer, Promoter, Blogger, Poet & Performance Artist.  www.ReverseRitual.com.

$10 nonmembers   $5 members

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Charm the plow, & kiss the candle

2 February 2017 – Astro-Weather: Today is Groundhogs Day, where the fate of winter rests on the shoulders of a furry rodent, for those muggles who believe in a more modern folklore.  If he the sticks his head out of his burrow this morning & sees his shadow, we’ll have 6 more weeks of winter. But if the weather is cloudy, it means spring is right around the corner.

What does this have to do with astronomy? Groundhog Day celebrates one of the 4 cross-quarter days. February 2 is the traditionally celebrated date betwixt the winter solstice & the vernal equinox. (The actual cosmic alignment happens tomorrow when the Sun reaches 15 degrees Aquarius & is called by some, Candlemas, still others Brigid’s Day or Imbolc – the lambing season – the time of year when the belly of the great mother quickens with the growing light*)

Right after dark this week, face east & look overhead. The bright star there is Capella, the Goat Star. To the right of it, by a couple of finger-widths at arm’s length, is a small, narrow triangle of stars known as “the Kids.” Although they’re not exactly eye-grabbing, they form a never-forgotten asterism with Capella.

Jupiter rises around 10 pm CST & climbs highest in the south about an hour before morning twilight commences. The benevolent god shines against the backdrop of Virgo, just north of that constellation’s brightest star, Spica.

This morning, viewers get a bonus because this giant appears to have a “black eye.” It is actually the dark shadow of Ganymede, the solar system’s largest moon, which crosses Jupiter’s north polar region from 1:51 to 4:25 am CST

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary The 40th day of the Christmas-Epiphany season, commemorating the presentation of Jesus at the Temple. Joseph & Mary brought the child into the Temple, & when Simeon & Anna the prophetess, saw Him, they knew the prophesy of ‘The Chosen One’ had been fulfilled.

We see the connection between the Buddha & Jesus of Nazareth in the stories of Asita & Simeon. When Asita, the great Indian sage, saw Siddhartha as a young child, before he had reached Buddhahood, he was able to recognize what the child would become. It was Asita’s heart’s desire to see the Buddha before he died, so he wept because he was an old man & would not live to see him become the Buddha. This wise seer was then reborn in the time of Jesus as Simeon introduced in Luke 2:29-30 as the temple priest who waits for the Messiah. He recognizes the Buddha in the Nathan Jesus, so he praises god & says now he can die happy, having fulfilled his heart’s desire.

Mariä Lichtmess – Candlemas, Christian Churches bless the candles to be used for the New Year.

Imbolc –  means ‘in the belly’ or ‘in the milk’ – ‘the lambing season’. Among the Celts, the pagan celebration of Imbolc honors the Triple Goddess Brigid, associated with purification & the fires of the forge, to call in the powers of the sun. Folks would carry torches & cross the fields in procession, praying to the goddess to purify the ground before planting. Crêpes are a tradtional food, with their round form &  golden color -reminiscent of the sun, an appropriate symbol during Imbolc, as this is the time of the year when the days get longer, & the roots begin to stir.

In churches, the torches were replaced by blessed candles whose glow was supposed to take away evil & symbolize that Christ is the light of the world. They would then take the candles to their homes to bring protection thruout the New Year. In 1372 this celebration became associated with the purification of Mary at the Temple (similar to the churching of women).

Lupercalia – The ancient Romans celebrated this festival in honor of Lupercus, & Feralia the god & goddess of fertility & shepherds. A theme of purification was also present. There was a custom of the Vestal Virgins offering cakes made with wheat from the old crop so that the following crop would be fruitful. (more on the above feasts to follow on another BLOG)

Feast of the Bear – From antiquity to the Middle Ages, bears were a cult symbol of the Germans, Scandinavians & the Celts. On this day they celebrated the end of hibernation. This was around the time when the bears would leave their dens to see if the weather was mild. For a long time, the Catholic Church sought to eradicate these pagan practices. To do this, it instituted the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple which is celebrated on February 2, which corresponds to the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary. However, the celebrations of the bear & the return of the  light continued, with bonfires & other torchlight processions. Pope Gelasius I in the fifth century instituted the feast of candles, or Candlemas. From the twelfth to the eighteenth century, Candlemas was called “chandelours” which means bear in French, in many areas (including the Alps, Pyrenees, Ardennes) where the memory of the cult of the bear was still very present. There is also the Aosta Saint-Ours, & Saint Blaise (which means “bear”). Candlemas is also the beginning of the carnival period; the bear is the carnival animal par excellence.

 Frederic Leighton

Feast of Persephone  – In addition, the Festa candelarum in Rome commemorated the search for the Spring Goddess Persephone, by her mother the Goddess of Life, Demeter, kidnapped by the King of the Other World Hades. This festival symbolizes the return of the Light. The myths of Sleeping Beauty or Theseus & Ariadne, for example, relate to the release or liberation of the light (Dawn of the year) by the “solar knight”.

 Gerbrand van den Eeckhout

Feast day of Cornelius a Roman centurion. He is depicted in the New Testament as a God-fearing man who always prayed & was full of good works.  Cornelius receives a vision in which an angel of God tells him that his prayers have been heard, he understands that he’s chosen for a higher alternative. The angel then instructs Cornelius to send the men of his household to Joppa, where they will find Simon Peter, who is residing with a tanner by the name of Simon (Acts 10:5ff).

The conversion of Cornelius comes after a separate vision given to Simon Peter (Acts 10:10–16) himself. In the vision, Simon Peter sees all manner of beasts & fowl being lowered from Heaven in a sheet. A voice commands Simon Peter to eat. When he objects to eating those animals that are unclean according to Mosaic Law, the voice tells him not to call unclean that which God has cleansed.

When Cornelius’ men arrive, Simon Peter understands that through this vision the Lord commanded the Apostle to preach the Word of God to the Gentiles. Peter accompanies Cornelius’ men back to Caesarea. When Cornelius meets Simon Peter, he falls at Peter’s feet. Simon Peter raises the centurion & the two men share their visions. Simon Peter tells of Jesus’ ministry & the Resurrection; the Holy Spirit descends on everyone at the gathering & they all begin speaking in tongues, praising God

1786 – Birthday of Jacques Philippe Marie Binet, a French mathematician, physicist & astronomer. Binet’s Formula expressing Fibonacci numbers in closed form is named in his honour.

Delphine Lebourgeois

1882 – Birthday of James Joyce, Irish novelist, short story writer, & poet

1971 – Idi Amin replaces President Milton Obote as leader of Uganda

1972 – The British embassy in Dublin is destroyed in protest at Bloody Sunday

1976 – The Groundhog Day gale hits the north-eastern United States & south-eastern Canada, killing 112

1987 – After the 1986 People Power Revolution, the Philippines enacts a new constitution

1990 – Apartheid: F. W. de Klerk announces the unbanning of the African National Congress & promises to release Nelson Mandela

2007 – The worst flooding in Indonesia in 300 years begins. Death toll 804

2012 – The ferry MV Rabaul Queen sinks off the coast of Papua New 300 dead

***

Carol Buchman

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Let the crystals fall
To add form to the light
Thru the white I will see
The single star that calls to me
The gibbous moon falls away so that I may live
Free to stumble
Free to fly with my snow angel
Listening, waiting, willing
The sap to rise
~hag

***

Genny Rosen

A Glimpse into
Brigid, the Alchemical Triple Goddess
of the 4 fires & the purifying waters
which gives birth to healing.

 A long time ago, nigh the beginning, near the waters of a sacred well, at the first crack of pink in the young morning of the Cross-Quarter between Winter & Spring, at the very threshold – the goddess Brigid slipped into the world, & the waters of the world rippled with joy.

Up rose a column of fire – out of the head of the new goddess – that burned to the very sky. Brigid reached up & broke away a flaming plume from her crown & dropped it on the ground before her. There it leapt & shone, creating a new hearth.

Then from the fire of her hearth, Brigid used both hands to draw out a leaping tongue of heat, swallowed it, & felt the fire burn straight to her heart. There stood the goddess, fire crowning her head, fire leaping inside her heart, glowing & shooting from her hands, & dancing on the hearth before her.

The waters of the sacred well quickened as Brigid built a chimney of brick about her hearth. Then she formed a roof of thatch & walls of stone. And so it was that by the waters of the sacred well the goddess built the forge in which she keeps the 4 fires which have served the world evermore.

Out of the fire in Brigid’s hands baked the craft of bending iron. Out of the fire on Brigid’s hearth & the waters of her sacred well came the healing potions, teas, & tinctures. Out of the fire on Brigid’s head flared out writing & poetry. Out of the fire in Brigid’s heart spread the warmth of compassion.

Word of the gifts of Brigid’s fire traveled deep & wide. People flocked to learn from Brigid the secret of using fire to soften iron & bend it to the shape of their will. The people called it smithcraft, & made wheels, pots, & tools that did not break.

All the medicine plants of the earth were gathered & brought to the house of the goddess. With their leaves, flowers, bark, & roots, they offered themselves to the waters of her sacred well. Brigid made healing brews. She gave a boy with weak teeth an infusion of the dandelion root. She gave a young woman the decoction of raspberry leaf to help her womb carry a child. An old bent man, took from Brigid wintergreen bark for his ache & black cherry juice for the gout. She gave comfrey to a girl with a broken leg & blue cohosh to another to bring her moon-blood without pain. Brigid infused motherwort, licorice root, & dried parsley for a woman who was becoming a crone. “Cup a day,” said Brigid, “that you stay supple & strong.”

The people were healed & wanted Brigid’s recipes. “But we can’t remember which plants for which healings, where to gather them or how long to steep them,” they told Brigid.

The fire on Bridget’s head blazed bright. She took up a blackened stick & made marks with it on a flat piece of bark. “These are the talking marks,” She said. “They are the way to remember what you don’t want to forget.”

The talking marks also let the people write down the stories of her wisdom. Here is one that fits for us today:

Once 2 men, came to Brigid, both had a terrible case of leprosy.

“Bathe yourself in my well.” said Brigid to the 1st man. And so it was that at every place the healing waters touched, the man’s skin turned whole again.

“Now bathe your friend,” said Brigid.

Repulsed, the man backed away from his friend. “I won’t touch him,” he said.

“Then you are not truly healed,” said the goddess. With that truth revealed, the 1st man’s leprosy returned & the goddess herself bathed & healed the 2nd man.

“Return to me with compassion,” she said to the 1st man. “There find your healing.”

The folk hold the wisdom of the goddess close; & every year on Imbolc they thank Brigid for her well of wisdom & her fires of hand, hearth, head & heart.

Brigid is a Triple goddess holding the archetype of the Maiden, Mother & Crone. In her maiden aspect, she is said to charm new life into the cold heart of Winter, with her white birch wand, to help him open his eyes to the promise of Spring. Imbolc literally means ‘in the belly’ it is the lambing season after all, when the milk begins to flow.

Traditionally a time of purification — so clean your house! Brigid will thank you for it. If you have any Christmas greenery lingering, burn it now. And bathe with warm milk for health & beauty.

Leave a silk ribbon on your doorstep for Brigid to bless: It can then be used for healing purposes

Give an offering: cake, buttered bread & milk will do — outside your door: Brigid & her cow are said to walk through the neighborhood tonight. In the city it is proper to give food to the homeless.

Make your own Brigid Cross, a fiery sun-wheel & hang it up, especially in the kitchen where her influence can bless your food.

Meditate upon what you would like to see grow in health & strength this year: for yourself, your family, your community, the Earth, & ask for Bride’s blessing upon your prayers.

When my daughter was young, we would gather with other Waldorf families during this magical time to honor & explore the power of the Triple Goddess within us, through storytelling, crafting fiery Sun-Wheel’s around the fire, sharing a potluck meal, & making a scavenger hunt in the woods.

Now is the time of the stirring, when the sap begins to rise & the waters to flow. While frost still bites & winds still blow, the light is growing stronger, & life begins to wake. It is the time of year when the belly of the great mother quickens with the growing light, for this is the feast of Brigid – the midwife of the New year who births the sun. Through the union of fire & water, we can work the magic to bring in healing & call in the spring.

Thank you, Brigid, for the smith-craft of your forge, the soothing healing teas, the talking marks, & for the warmth of compassion. May we use it wisely to prepare for growth & renewal, performing the ancient rituals of spring cleaning, purifying & anointing the body electric, awakening the spirit within…A time of spiritual re-dedication, of self-blessing & initiation, of affirming & energizing creative work…A time of blessing the seeds & consecrating the garden tools…A time to purify & get fertile, so let’s charm the plow, & kiss the candle, to re-kindle, a need-fire, as a welcoming beacon, to call back, our dormant power, to heat up, our potential, & re-seed our creativity. As we add fuel to the fire of our community, one spark warms us all, a purifying fire, that burns clean & opens the way to the true power of love & light from deep within us all…

~Hazel Archer-Ginsberg 

Come join me in a ritual celebrating the Mysteries of the Celtic Goddess

Brigid by Helena Nelson Reed

Thursday February 9th 2017 -7 pm
at the Theosophical Society in America
1926 North Main Street
Wheaton, IL 60187

Invoking the Practical Alchemy of the Celtic Triple Goddess Brigid 
To Purify, Awaken, & Galvanize Your Head, Heart, and Hands

Brigid’s festival is the 1st of the cross-quarter days in the wheel of the year, a time of spiritual re-dedication and initiation. Brigid invites us to forge and shape ourselves, as the tools of our own destiny. Come Renew Yourself. Together we will thaw the winter & rouse the mysteries growing within…

Hazel Archer Ginsberg is a Spiritual Midwife, and Trans-denominational Minister, working in an eclectic style that inspires connections – initiating us into the magic, waiting to be revealed, in the cycle of the seasons. Festivals Coordinator of the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society. Lecturer, Promoter, Blogger, Poet & Performance Artist.  www.ReverseRitual.com.

$10 nonmembers   $5 members

Live Webcast

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Current Festival & Program Events

Vibrate the Word in love

27 February 2017 – Astro-Weather: New Moon, exact at 8:07 pm CST. At its New phase, the Moon crosses the sky with the Sun & so remains hidden in our star’s glare.

One of the biggest asterism in the heavens right now is the Winter Hexagon. It fills the sky toward the east & south after dinnertime. Start with brilliant Sirius at its bottom. Going clockwise from there, march through Procyon, Pollux & Castor, Menkalinan & Capella very high, Aldebaran over to Capella’s lower right, down to Rigel in Orion’s foot, & back to Sirius. Betelgeuse shines inside the Hexagon, off center.

***

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Chinese Lunar New Year of the Red Fire Rooster*

1756 – Birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in full Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, baptized as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. A prolific & influential composer of the Classical era. Born in Salzburg, he showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard & violin, he composed from the age of 5 & performed before European royalty. At 17, Mozart was engaged as a musician at the Salzburg court, but grew restless & traveled in search of a better position. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security.

Mozart’s physical appearance described him as “a remarkably small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair of which he was rather vain, except for his large intense eyes, he gave no signs of his genius.” His facial complexion was pitted, a reminder of his childhood case of smallpox. He loved elegant clothing. Of his voice his wife later wrote that it “was a tenor, rather soft in speaking and delicate in singing, but when anything excited him, or it became necessary to exert it, it was both powerful and energetic”.

Mozart usually worked long & hard, finishing compositions at a tremendous pace as deadlines approached. He often made sketches & drafts; unlike Beethoven’s these are mostly not preserved, as his wife sought to destroy them after his death.

Mozart lived at the center of the Viennese musical world, & knew a great number & variety of people: fellow musicians, theatrical performers, fellow Salzburgers, & aristocrats, including some acquaintance with the Emperor Joseph II. He enjoyed billiards & dancing, & kept pets: a canary, a starling, a dog, & a horse for recreational riding. He had a startling fondness for scatological humor, which is preserved in his surviving letters, notably those written to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart around 1777–1778, & in his correspondence with his sister & parents. Mozart also wrote scatological music, a series of canons that he sang with his friends.

During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, & operas, & portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his death. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze & two sons. He composed more than 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, & choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, & his influence is profound on subsequent Western art music

***

Toppie Lou

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Beware the seduction of talk,
The many nonsense words,
Thorns & faded flowers
Speak instead the language of the Sun
The yawn & shudder of the newborn
Speak for the gods hidden in things that cry
Uncover their faces…
Thru your own light
Vibrate the Word in love
~hag

***

*Celebrations start tonight on the New Moon for the Chinese New Year, considered a “Spring Festival“, & goes for 15 days, ending with the Full Moon on the Lantern Festival, February 10-11th. This is based on the ancient Chinese calendar that existed when the Shang Dynasty was in power during the 14th Century B.C. The Chinese calendar is a complex timepiece; its parameters set according to the lunar phases as well as the solar solstices & equinoxes. The Chinese calendar also follows the Chinese zodiac, meaning each year is represented by one of 12 signs of the Zodiac.

2017 is a Fire Rooster Year. According to Chinese astrology, each year is associated with one of five elements as well as an animal, including gold (metal), wood, water, fire or Earth. The element, combined with the zodiac animal, set the astrology for the year. This year is a fire year, & so those born in 2017 are Fire Roosters. The last Fire Rooster Year was 1957.

This Lunar festival is centuries old, it is a time to honor deities as well as ancestors. According to tales & legends, the beginning of the Chinese New Year started with a mythical beast called the Nian, who had the reputation of eating the villagers, especially children. One year, all the villagers decided to go hide from the beast. Then an old man appeared & said that he was going to stay to get revenge on the Nian. All the villagers thought he was insane. The old man put up red papers & set off firecrackers. The day after, the villagers came back to their town to see that nothing was destroyed. They assumed that the old man was a deity who came to save them. The villagers then understood that the Nian was afraid of the color red & loud noises. When the New Year was about to come, the villagers would wear red clothes, hang red lanterns, or scrolls on windows & doors. People also used firecrackers to frighten away the Nian. From then on, Nian never came to the village again. And the legends say that eventually the Nian was captured by Hongjun Laozu, an ancient Taoist monk.

The first day of this festival is for the welcoming of the deities of the heavens & earth, officially beginning at midnight. It is a traditional practice to light fireworks, & burn bamboo sticks to make as much of a din as possible to chase off the evil spirits. Many people, abstain from meat on the 1st day because it is believed this will ensure longevity. Some consider lighting fires & using knives to be bad luck on New Year’s Day, so all food is cooked before hand. It is also considered bad luck to use the broom on New Year’s day, so It is traditional for every family to thoroughly cleanse the house, the day before, on the eve, in order to sweep away any ill-fortune & to make way for good incoming luck. Windows & doors will be decorated with red color paper-cuts & couplets with popular themes of “good fortune” or “happiness”, “wealth”, & “longevity”. Dumplings are often created to resemble gold & silver ingots to represent riches & foods like hard-boiled eggs, fish & chicken are all associated with prosperity. Spring rolls tend to represent wealth & sweet rice balls represent family togetherness.

Most importantly, the 1st day of Chinese New Year is a time to honor one’s elders, so families visit the oldest & most senior members of their extended families, usually their parents, grandparents & great-grandparents.

For Buddhists, the first day is also the birthday of Maitreya Bodhisattva the Buddha-to-be.

Members of the family who are married also give red envelopes containing cash known as ‘lai see’, to junior members of the family, mostly children & teenagers; to suppress aging & the challenges associated with the coming year. Business managers also give bonuses through red packets to employees for good luck, smooth-sailing, good health & wealth. The amount of money doesn’t matter as it is only symbolic, however, it is usually an even number. The numbers 8 & 88 are considered especially lucky because “eight” sounds like a word that means “prosperity.”

New Year in China is the largest period of human migration on earth. Everyone goes back home to visit their families, & with so many migrant workers, this equates to hundreds of millions of people!

Praying in a temple during Chinese New Year is said to be a particularly blessed activity, & will lead to a smooth coming year. In Shanghai, China’s biggest city, thousands flock to Longhua Temple, the city’s biggest temple, to pray for good fortune.

At temple fairs in many Chinese cities, traditional performances can be seen: dragon dances, lion dances, & imperial performances like an emperor’s wedding. In North China people perform various versions of the Rice Sprout Song.

As Chinese people believe that the year’s start affects the whole year, are many superstitions & taboos for the Spring Festival season. These taboos usually apply up to a month before the festival & continue to the end of the festival (day 15, the Lantern Festival). Some Chinese people believe that they shouldn’t wash their hair in the first three days because that will wash away good luck. A cry of a child is believed to bring bad luck to the family, so the young are placated fastidiously. Another interesting thing is red underwear…You will see red underwear sold at supermarkets & street markets. Also no begging: To ask for a loan is a big “no-no”.

新年的祝福,平日的希冀,愿你心境祥和、充满爱意,愿你的世界全是美满,愿你一切称心如意,快乐无比。

Xīnnián de zhùfú, píngrì de xījì, yuàn nǐ xīnjìng xiánghé, chōngmǎn ài yì, yuàn nǐ de shìjiè quán shì měimǎn, yuàn nǐ yīqiè chènxīn rúyì, kuàilè wúbǐ.

At New Year and always, may peace and love fill your heart, beauty fill your world, and contentment and joy fill your days.

I am alert
Ready to take action
The first on the scene
The last to leave
I take chances
But I am precise
I know where things belong
I am orderly and fastidious
Nothing escapes me
I am always prepared
I never give up or in
I AM THE ROOSTER

~Hazel Archer-Ginsberg 

***

The Bridging Project – Between Life and Death from Soul to Soul

Audio/Video Conference – February 1, 2017 – 7:15 pm CST

The Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America invites you to our conversation with special guest Mark Miller.  Mark is a registered architect in the states of Illinois and Michigan, and is a member of the Passive House Alliance US and co-founder of the Chicago chapter of the organization (Passive House is the world’s highest energy efficiency standard).  www.phaus.org

Mark’s talk is titled: “Spirit Parks, an Alternative to Cemeteries”.  Mark will be discussing the spiritual intentions of traditional western cemeteries; overview of how different cultures embrace memorialization and creating a “place” for connecting with the dead; and he will present his thoughts on what the next evolutionary step in places of memorialization may look like and why.

Mark has published various articles and delivered lectures on Zen Architecture, Passive House and Green Design.  Mark’s spirituality includes past and current practices in western and eastern traditions;  Mark is an active member of the Chicago Waldorf School community, where his children have attended for 13 years.  Mark has designed several projects for the school incorporating Steiner’s philosophy within the architectural design wherever possible. www.zenplusarchitecture.com 

This will be a “go-to-meeting” conference call allowing us an opportunity to see one another while conversing (or audio only if you prefer).  To connect to the audio/video-conference:

Option 1.  Click link below if you wish to connect through your computer (a headset is recommended) https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/490464125

Option 2.  Call in using your telephone.

United States: +1 (571) 317-3116

Canada: +1 (647) 497-9372

Access Code: 490-464-125

Option 3. You can use a combination of Options 1 and 2 (computer and phone)

Please join us!

Agenda – 7:15  Verse

7:18  Welcome and Introductions

7:25  Introduce guest speaker

7:30  Guest Speaker: Mark Miller (45 minutes)

8:15  Q&A – state your name & location before asking a question

8:28  Close with verse

***

Saturday 4 February 2017,  3 pm at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society 4249 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago IL. 60618. MAP

The Madonna Sequence

Presented by Debra Barford & Christine Culbert

The Madonna Pentagram, was first recommended by Dr. Rudolf Steiner in 1911 as an enlivening, curative therapy. Raphael’s paintings of the Madonna express secret truths. These images invite us to look into the deeper significance of the flow of energy stimulated within us as our attention is guided through the five-pointed-star-like movement of the images in relation to one another, accompanied by the appropriate tones on the lyre. Rudolf Steiner described the healing effects of Raphael’s Madonna’s in August 1908, and between 1908 and 1911 he directed Dr. Felix Peipers to arrange fifteen images as a therapeutic meditation. Sometimes called the Raphael Madonna Series, these fifteen pictures invite our active contemplation. Each image can awaken inner pictures that lift us into communion with realms beyond the physical world, stirring our feelings of wonder and reverence and opening our souls to divine mysteries.

$10 donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

***

Mysteries of the Celtic Goddess

brigid-helena-nelson-reedBrigid by Helena Nelson Reed

Thursday February 9th 2017 -7 pm
at the Theosophical Society in America
1926 North Main Street
Wheaton, IL 60187

Invoking the Practical Alchemy of the Celtic Triple Goddess Brigid
To Purify, Awaken, & Galvanize Your Head, Heart, and Hands

Brigid’s festival is the 1st of the cross-quarter days in the wheel of the year, a time of spiritual re-dedication and initiation. Brigid invites us to forge and shape ourselves, as the tools of our own destiny. Come Renew Yourself. Together we will thaw the winter & rouse the mysteries growing within…

Hazel Archer Ginsberg is a Spiritual Midwife, and Trans-denominational Minister, working in an eclectic style that inspires connections – initiating us into the magic, waiting to be revealed, in the cycle of the seasons. Festivals Coordinator of the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society. Lecturer, Promoter, Blogger, Poet & Performance Artist.  www.ReverseRitual.com.

$10 nonmembers   $5 members

Live Webcast

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DIGITAL Pandora: Imaging HOPE by Gretchen Steele

Art Opening 7 pm – 9 pm Friday February 17th, 2017 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society 4249 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago IL. 60618. MAP

A Performance Art Exhibit & Gallery Reception with an opportunity for participants to create their own collage art to be shown at the Closing exhibit March 31st, 2017

DIGITAL Pandora: Imaging HOPE is a multi-media art exhibit including work inspired by the myth of Pandora as a narrative of hope – by Gretchen Steele

The exhibit includes multi-media collages on paper, large-scale (5’ x 5’) collaged fabric prayer cloths, a performance art piece titled Embodied Compass ll: Reliquary Immersion, and a participatory SEA (Socially Engaging Artwork) inviting viewers to collaborate in a collaged community mural using a images (from the artist’s photo bank of the previous performance piece, Embodied Compass l: Digital Pandora) and marker-based drawing materials.

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The 156th Anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s Birthday on the New Moon/Solar Eclipse

Sunday February 26th 2017, 3 pm – 5 pm

We will celebrate Steiner’s birthday and the solar eclipse by analyzing his horoscope in the most respectful manner.  Astrologer Victoria Martin will expound on some classic interpretations of Rudolf Steiner’s Birth chart – For instance did you know he was born on a Full Moon, near the zenith of the sky aligned to Saturn? Victoria will also go further by adding the fixed stars, which according to Brian Gray at Steiner College, are basic components in Astrosophy.

The Solar eclipse, on Sunday February 26th 2017 indicates a new phase of Steiner’s influence, which is especially potent for the next six months!

Victoria will also do 3-minute readings for each participant to see where their birthdays fit in Steiner’s horoscope!

This can be even more precise if the entire horoscope of participants is available, so please email your date, time, and place of birth to viccimartin@gmail.com.

We can also look into the 2017 trends if there is interest! And if time allows Hazel Archer Ginsberg will give a brief overview of the phases in Rudolf Steiner’s life.

 $10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society 4249 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago IL. 60618. MAP

For more info. contact Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

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An evening Discourse &  Full day Workshop with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg at

Fostering Sustainable Agriculture through Research, Education and Policy since 1984

What is Anthroposophy?

Friday March 3rd 2017,  Potluck Social 5:30 pm  Lecture –7 pm – 9 pm

A Hands-on Discourse with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

What can the human being (anthropos) of today do to recognize our inherent wisdom (sophia) to access the source of spiritual knowledge, for our own inner development, and for the evolution of the earth and all of humanity?

What would it be like to support each other in community, as we strive to penetrate the mystery of our relationship with the spiritual world?

How does this ‘Spiritual Science’ built on the research of Rudolf Steiner, speak to the riddles of existence: our artistic needs, the truth of karma, the mystery of evil, life after death and so much more?

Come Explore this Modern Path of Initiation with:

Hazel Archer-Ginsberg – Festivals Coordinator & Council Member of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch, and the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society. Founder of Reverse Ritual – Understanding Anthroposophy Through the Rhythms of the Year– Presenter, Poet, & Trans-denominational Minister.

Register here

Also:

 Saturday March 4th 2017 –

A Experiential Three Part Workshop* with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity

Some of the topics treated in this experiential workshop are: The nature of the brain, the development of speech, angelic beings, ancient language, Zarathustra, Buddha, & Christ.

‘The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity: Some Results of Spiritual-Scientific Research into Human History and Development’ consists of three sections. Each section was originally a lecture (6, 7, & 8 June 1911) but was subsequently reworked by Steiner & cast into the form of an essay.  It is available without a fee at Rudolf Steiner Archives 

Session #1 – 10 am – 12 noon:
• Introductions
• The divine wisdom working in the human being in the 1st three years of life.
• Through inner striving we can contact again and consciously build on this wisdom which is connected to the Christ impulse.
• Activity- Biography work: Our 1st conscious memory – a preview of the “I”.

Noon – 1:30 pm – Lunch

Session #2 – 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm:
• The childlike condition of humanity in ancient times, directed by higher spiritual beings.
• A look into the evolution of these guiding spirits –progressive as well as regressive –
• Revealing the necessity of the ‘two kinds of evil’.
• The importance of Spiritual Science to avoid error.
• Activity – Labyrinth Walk

3:30 pm – 4 pm – Break

Session #3 – 4 pm – 6 pm:
• A survey of the Post-Atlantean age, our present epoch.
• The Christ connection with the progressive spiritual beings
• Modern science as the work of the regressive spiritual beings
• A peek into the future
• Activity – The Golden Legend & The Rose Cross Mediation: An artistic rendering

*(Workshops can be taken as a whole or individually, details to follow)

Register here

Michael Fields W2493 County Rd ES
East Troy, WI 53120, USA

 

 

 

 

 

 

She is

22 January 2017 – Astro-Weather: Capella high overhead, & equally bright Rigel in Orion’s foot. They cross the sky’s meridian at almost exactly the same time: around 8 pm CST now, with Rigel marking true south

Although the asteroid Vesta reached opposition & peak visibility last week, the brightest minor planet of 2017 still shines east of Kappa this evening

Vesta Goddess of the Hearth

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 Jim Leasure

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN Occult HISTORY

1561 – Birthday of Francis Bacon – English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, & author. He served both as Attorney General & as Lord Chancellor of England. After his death, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate of materialism & practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution. Bacon died of pneumonia, with one account by John Aubrey stating that he had contracted the condition while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat. Rudolf Steiner speaks about him in a previous incarnation as Haroun al Raschid

1729 – Birthday of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist & art critic – one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays & theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature. He is widely considered by theatre historians to be the first dramaturg in his role at Abel Seyler’s Hamburg National Theatre.

From Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies – Volume I, Lecture 11 by Rudolf Steiner:

“Another personality, very well-known to you by name, is of exceptional interest in connection with investigations into karma. It is Lessing. The circumstances of Lessing’s life, I may say, have always interested me to an extraordinary degree. Lessing is really the founder of the better sort of journalism, the journalism that has substance and is really out to accomplish something. Before Lessing, poets and dramatists had taken their subjects from the aristocracy. Lessing, on the other hand, is at pains to introduce bourgeois life, ordinary middle-class life, into the drama, the life concerned generally with the destinies of men as men, and not with the destinies of men in so far as they hold some position in society or the like. Purely human conflicts — that is what Lessing wanted to portray on the stage. In the course of his work he applied himself to many great problems, as for example when he tried to determine the boundaries of painting and of poetry in his Laocoon. But the most interesting thing of all is the powerful impetus with which Lessing fought for the idea of tolerance. You need only take his Nathan the Wise and you will see at once what a foremost place this idea of tolerance has in Lessing’s mind and life. In weaving the fable of the three kings in Nathan the Wise, he wants to show how the three main religions have gone astray from their original forms and are none of them really genuine, and how one must go in search of the true form, which has been lost. Here we have tolerance united with an uncommonly deep and significant idea.

Interesting, too, is the conversation between Freemasons, entitled Ernst und Falk, and much else that springs from Freemasonry. What Lessing accomplished in the way of critical research into the history of religious life is, for one who is able to judge its significance, really astounding. But we must be able to place the whole Lessing, in his complete personality, before us.

We begin to get an impression of Lessing when we observe, shall I say, the driving force with which he hurls his sentences against his opponents. He wages a polemic against the civilisation of Middle Europe — quite a refined and correct polemic, but at every turn hitting straight home. You must here observe a peculiar nuance in Lessing’s character if you want to understand the make-up of his life. On the one hand we have the sharpness, often caustic sharpness, in such writings as The Dramatic Art of Hamburg, and then we have to find the way over, as it were, to an understanding, for example, of the words used by Lessing when a son had been born to him and had died directly after birth. He writes somewhat as follows in a letter: Yes, he has at once taken leave again of this world of sorrow; he has thereby done the best thing a human being can do. In so writing, Lessing is giving expression to his pain in a wonderfully brave way, not for that reason feeling the pain one whit less deeply than someone who can do nothing but bemoan the event. This ability to draw back into himself in pain was characteristic of the man who at the same time knew how to thrust forward with vigour when he was developing his polemics. This is what makes it so affecting to read the letter written when his child had died immediately after birth, leaving the mother seriously ill.

Lessing had moreover this remarkable thing in his destiny — and it is quite characteristic, when one sets out to find the karmic connections in his case — that he was friends in Berlin with a man who was in every particular his opposite, namely, Nikolai; an example of a true philistine. Although a friend of Lessing, he was none the less a typical philistine-bourgeois; and he had visions, most strange and remarkable visions.

Lessing, genius as he was, had no visions, not even dreams. Nikolai literally suffered from visions. They came, and they went away only after leeches had been applied. Yes, in extremity they actually applied leeches to him, in order that he might not be forever tormented by the spiritual world which would not let him alone.

At the close of his life Lessing wrote the remarkable essay, The Education of the Human Race, at the end of which, quite isolated, as it were, the idea of repeated earth-lives appears. The book shows how mankind goes through one epoch of development after another, and how the Gods gave into man’s hand as a first primer, so to speak, the Old Testament, and then as a second primer the New Testament, and how in the future a third book will come for the further education of the human race. And then all at once the essay is brought to a close with a brief presentation of the idea that man lives through repeated earth-lives. And there Lessing says, again in a way that is absolutely in accord with his character: The idea of repeated earth-lives does not seem so absurd, considering that it was present in very early times, when men had not yet been spoilt by school learning? The essay then ends with a genuine panegyric on repeated earth-lives, finishing with these beautiful words: “Is not all Eternity mine?”

When a man like Lessing utters a profound aphorism such as this on repeated earth-lives, there is, properly speaking, no possibility of ignoring it.

You will readily see that the personality of Lessing is interesting in the highest degree from a karmic point of view, in relation to his own passage through different earth-lives. In the second half of the 18th century the idea of repeated earth-lives was by no means a commonly accepted one. It comes forth in Lessing like a flash of lightning, like a flash of genius. We cannot account for its appearance; it cannot possibly be due to Lessing’s education or to any other influence in this particular life. We are compelled to ask how it may be with the previous life of a man in whom at a certain age the idea of repeated earth-lives suddenly emerges — an idea that is foreign to the civilisation of his own day — emerges, too, in such a way that the man himself points to the fact that the idea was once present in very early times. The truth is that he is really bringing forward inner grounds for the idea, grounds of feeling that carry with them an indication of his own earth-life in the distant past. Needless to say, in his ordinary surface-consciousness he has no notion of such connections. The things we do not know are, however, none the less true. If those things alone were true that many men know, then the world would be poor indeed in events and poor indeed in beings”.

Henry Pierce Bone

1788 –Birthday of Lord Byron, a British poet, politician, & a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems, Don Juan & Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, & the short lyric poem, “She Walks in Beauty”.

He travelled extensively across Europe, especially in Italy, where he lived for seven years. Later in his brief life, Byron joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire, for which many Greeks revere him as a national hero.

He died in 1824 at the age of 36 from a fever contracted while in Missolonghi. Often described as the most flamboyant & notorious of the major Romantics, Byron was both celebrated & castigated in life for his aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs – with men as well as women, as well as rumors of a scandalous liaison with his half-sister – & self-imposed exile. He also fathered Ada, Countess of Lovelace, whose work on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine is considered a founding document in the field of computer science.

Rudolf Steiner speaks about Lord Byron in the same lecture with Lessing- Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies – Volume I, Lecture 11:

“I began to take a special interest in the life of Lord Byron. And at that same time I got to know some Byron enthusiasts. One of them was the poetess, Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, of whom I shall have much to say in my autobiography. During a certain period of her life she was a Byron enthusiast. Then there was another, a most remarkable personality, a strange mixture of all possible qualities Eugen Heinrich Schmidt. Many of you who know something about the history of Anthroposophy will be familiar with his name.

He came to Vienna, a tall, slight man filled with a burning enthusiasm, which came to expression at times in very forcible gestures and so on. It was none the less genuine for that. And it was just this enthusiasm of Schmidt’s that gave me the required “jerk,” as it were. I thought I would like to do him a kindness, and as he had recently written a most enthusiastic and inspired article on Lord Byron, I introduced him to my other Byron enthusiast, Marie Eugenie delle Grazie. And now began a wildly excited discussion on Byron. The two were really quite in agreement, but they carried on a most lively and animated debate. All we others who were sitting round — a whole collection of theological students from the Vienna Catholic Faculty were there, who came every week and with whom I had made friends — all we others were silent. And the two who were thus conversing about Byron were sitting like this. — Here was the table, rather a long one, and at one end sat delle Grazie and at the other end, Eugen Heinrich Schmidt, gesticulating with might and main. All of a sudden his chair slips away from under him, and he falls under the table, his feet stretching right out to delle Grazie. I can tell you, it was a shock for us all! But this shock helped me to hit upon the solution of a particular problem.

Let me tell you of it quite objectively, as a matter of history. All that they had been saying about Byron had made a strong impression upon me, and I began to feel the keenest need to know how the karmic connections might be in the case of Byron. It was, of course, not so easy. But now I suddenly had the following experience. — It was really as if the whole picture of this conversation, with Eugen Heinrich Schmidt being so terribly impolite with his foot! — as if this picture had suddenly drawn my attention to the foot of Lord Byron, who was, as you know, club-footed. And from that I went on to say to myself: My beloved teacher, too, had a foot like that; this karmic connection must be investigated. I have already given you an example, in the affliction of the knee from which Eduard von Hartmann suffered, of how one’s search can be led back through peculiarities of this kind. I was able now to perceive the destiny of the teacher whom I loved and who also had such a foot. And it was remarkable in the highest degree to observe how on the one hand the same peculiarity came to view both in the case of Byron and of my teacher, namely, the club-foot; but how on the other hand the two persons were totally different from one another, Byron, the poet of genius, who in spite of his genius — or perhaps because of it — was an adventurer; and the other a brilliant geometrician such as one seldom finds in teaching posts, a man at whose geometrical imagination and treatment of descriptive geometry one could only stand amazed.

In short, having before me these two men, utterly different in soul, I was able to solve the problem of their karma by reference to this seemingly insignificant physical detail. This detail it was that enabled me to consider the problems of Byron and my geometry teacher in connection with one another, and thereby to find the solution”.

Steiner continues this thread in Karmic Relationships, Vol. V: Lecture IV

“…The two men were there before me in this inner picture. And the karma of my teacher, as well as the peculiarity of which I have told you, led me to the discovery that in the 10th or 11th century, both these souls had lived in their earlier incarnations far over in the East of Europe where they came one day under the influence of a legend, a prophecy. This legend was to the effect that the Palladium, which in a certain magical way helped to sustain the power of Rome, had been brought to that city from ancient Troy, and hidden. When the Emperor Constantine conceived the wish to carry Roman culture to Constantinople he caused the Palladium to be transported with the greatest pomp and pageantry to Constantinople and hidden under a pillar, the details of which gave expression to his overweening pride. For he ordered an ancient statue of Apollo to be set at the top of this pillar, but altered in such a way as to be a portrait of himself. He caused wood to be brought from the Cross on which Christ had been crucified and shaped into a kind of crown which was then placed on the head of this statue. It was the occasion for indulging in veritable orgies of pride!

The legend went on to prophesy that the Palladium would be transferred from Constantinople to the North and that the power embodied in it would be vested eventually in a Slavonic Empire. This prophecy came to the knowledge of the two men of whom I have been speaking and they resolved to go to Constantinople and to carry off the Palladium to Russia. They did not succeed. But in one of them especially — in Byron — the urge remained, and was then transformed in the later life into the impulse to espouse the cause of freedom in Greece. This impulse led Byron, in the 19th century, to the very region, broadly speaking, where he had searched for the Palladium in an earlier incarnation.”

Gosta Adrian Nilsson

1849 – Birthday of August Strindberg, a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist & painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg’s career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays & more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, & politics. A bold experimenter & iconoclast throughout, he explored a wide range of dramatic methods & purposes, from naturalistic tragedy, monodrama, & history plays, to his anticipations of expressionist & surrealist dramatic techniques.  From his earliest work, Strindberg developed innovative forms of dramatic action, language, & visual composition. He is considered the “father” of modern Swedish literature & his The Red Room (1879) has frequently been described as the first modern Swedish novel.

During the 1890s he spent significant time abroad engaged in scientific experiments and studies of the occult. A series of psychotic attacks between 1894 & 1896 (referred to as his “Inferno crisis”) led to his hospitalization & return to Sweden. Under the influence of the ideas of Emanuel Swedenborg, he resolved after his recovery to become “the Zola of the Occult”. In 1898 he returned to playwriting with ‘To Damascu’s, which, like The Great Highway (1909), is a dream-play of spiritual pilgrimage. His ‘A Dream Play’ (1902) – with its radical attempt to dramatize the workings of the unconscious by means of an abolition of conventional dramatic time & space & the splitting, doubling, merging, & multiplication of its characters – was an important precursor to both expressionism & surrealism. He also returned to writing historical drama, the genre with which he had begun his playwriting career. He helped to run the Intimate Theatre from 1907, a small-scale theatre, modelled on Max Reinhardt’s Kammerspielhaus, that staged his chamber plays (such as The Ghost Sonata)

Rudolf Steiner gives an amazing account of his former life in as an initiate in ancient Egypt, in a karmic knot with another. They then both reincarnated together again Strindberg as Julia & his friend as Titus Livius. This account must be read in full.

Bassano

1901 – Deathday of Queen Victoria ruling over the United Kingdom, Ireland & India. She inherited the throne aged 18. The United Kingdom was already an established constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held relatively little direct political power. Privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy & ministerial appointments; publicly, she became a national icon who was identified with strict standards of personal morality.

Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. Their nine children married into royal & noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the sobriquet “the grandmother of Europe”. After Albert’s death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning & avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign her popularity recovered. Her Golden& Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration.

Her reign of 63 years & seven months is known as the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, & military change within the United Kingdom, & was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover. Her son & successor, Edward VII, belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father.

Victoria wrote an average of 2,500 words a day during her adult life. From July 1832 until just before her death, she kept a detailed journal, which eventually encompassed 122 volumes. After Victoria’s death, her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, was appointed her literary executor. Beatrice transcribed and edited the diaries covering Victoria’s accession onwards, & burned the originals in the process. Despite this destruction, much of the diaries still exist.

1910 – Deathday of Johann Steiner, father of Rudolf Steiner

One spring day in 1860, an autocratic Hungarian magnate, a certain Count Hoyos, who owned several large estates in Austria, dismissed his game-keeper, because this game-keeper, Johannes Steiner wanted to marry Franziska Blie, one of the Count’s innumerable housemaids. Perhaps the old Count had a foreboding as to what a great spiritual revolution would be born of this marriage. (The baroque palace of Hom, where it happened, is still in the possession of the Hoyos family, and stands today just as it was one hundred years ago.) So Johannes Steiner had to look for another occupation, and got himself accepted as a trainee telegraphist and signalman by the recently opened Austrian Southern Railway. He was given his first job in an out-of-the-way request stop called Kraljevic (today in Yugoslavia), and there his first child, Rudolf, arrived on February 25-27, 1861. On the same day the child was taken for an emergency baptism to the parish Church of St. Michael in the neighboring village of Draskovec. The baptismal register was written in Serbo-Croat and Latin, and the entry still can be read today as of one Rudolfus Josephus Laurentius Steiner. “Thus it happened,” Rudolf Steiner writes in his autobiography, “that the place of my birth is far removed from the region where I come from.”

From the severity of the Puszta the family moved, when the boy was two years old, into one of the most idyllic parts of Austria, called “the Burgenland” since 1921. Comprising the foothills of the eastern Alps, it is of great natural beauty, very fertile, and drenched in history. It takes its name from the many Burgen, i.e. castles which at different times of history were erected on nearly every hill. During recent excavations coins bearing the head of Philip of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great, have been found near Neudörfl, where the Steiners now settled, and where a daughter and a younger son were added to the family.

The management of the Austrian Southern Railway seems to have taken a sympathetic view toward the promising boy, and agreed to move father Steiner as stationmaster to several small stations south of Vienna, so that the eldest son was able to attend good schools as a day student, and finally in 1879 could matriculate at the Technical University of Vienna, then one of the most advanced scientific institutions of the world. Until then Rudolf Steiner’s school life had been fairly uneventful, except that some of his masters were rather disturbed by the fact that this teen-ager was a voracious reader of Kant and other philosophers, and privately was engrossed in advanced mathematics.” ~From the intro to Christianity as Mystical fact

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Gretchen A. Steele

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~She is
A fire raging, changing, going in
& Coming out of form in time
A mad genius, wind howling
& the beat of wings inspired
She is a star in the dark tomb
A shadow cast by sunlight
Life that can
Not be contained
A holy insurrection
Ever Marching
~hag

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The Bridging Project – Between Life and Death from Soul to Soul
Central Regional Council’s Audio/Video Conference
February 1st, 2017 – 7:15 pm CST

Guest Speaker Mark Miller, Architect – Builder – Director, will talk about ‘Spirit Parks’  “How We Design Places To Connect With The Dead” 

www.zenplusarchitecture.com
www.phaus.org

Details to follow

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Saturday 4 February 2017,  3 pm at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society 4249 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago IL. 60618. MAP

The Madonna Sequence

Presented by Debra Barford & Christine Culbert

The Madonna Pentagram, was first recommended by Dr. Rudolf Steiner in 1911 as an enlivening, curative therapy. Raphael’s paintings of the Madonna express secret truths. These images invite us to look into the deeper significance of the flow of energy stimulated within us as our attention is guided through the five-pointed-star-like movement of the images in relation to one another, accompanied by the appropriate tones on the lyre. Rudolf Steiner described the healing effects of Raphael’s Madonna’s in August 1908, and between 1908 and 1911 he directed Dr. Felix Peipers to arrange fifteen images as a therapeutic meditation. Sometimes called the Raphael Madonna Series, these fifteen pictures invite our active contemplation. Each image can awaken inner pictures that lift us into communion with realms beyond the physical world, stirring our feelings of wonder and reverence and opening our souls to divine mysteries.

$10 donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

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Mysteries of the Celtic Goddess

brigid-helena-nelson-reedBrigid by Helena Nelson Reed

Thursday February 9th 2017 -7 pm
at the Theosophical Society in America
1926 North Main Street
Wheaton, IL 60187

Invoking the Practical Alchemy of the Celtic Triple Goddess Brigid
To Purify, Awaken, & Galvanize Your Head, Heart, and Hands

Brigid’s festival is the 1st of the cross-quarter days in the wheel of the year, a time of spiritual re-dedication and initiation. Brigid invites us to forge and shape ourselves, as the tools of our own destiny. Come Renew Yourself. Together we will thaw the winter & rouse the mysteries growing within…

Hazel Archer Ginsberg is a Spiritual Midwife, and Trans-denominational Minister, working in an eclectic style that inspires connections – initiating us into the magic, waiting to be revealed, in the cycle of the seasons. Festivals Coordinator of the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society. Lecturer, Promoter, Blogger, Poet & Performance Artist.  www.ReverseRitual.com.

$10 nonmembers   $5 members

Live Webcast

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DIGITAL Pandora: Imaging HOPE by Gretchen Steele

Art Opening 7 pm – 9 pm Friday February 17th, 2017 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society 4249 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago IL. 60618. MAP

A Performance Art Exhibit & Gallery Reception with an opportunity for participants to create their own collage art to be shown at the Closing exhibit March 31st, 2017

DIGITAL Pandora: Imaging HOPE is a multi-media art exhibit including work inspired by the myth of Pandora as a narrative of hope – by Gretchen Steele

The exhibit includes multi-media collages on paper, large-scale (5’ x 5’) collaged fabric prayer cloths, a performance art piece titled Embodied Compass ll: Reliquary Immersion, and a participatory SEA (Socially Engaging Artwork) inviting viewers to collaborate in a collaged community mural using a images (from the artist’s photo bank of the previous performance piece, Embodied Compass l: Digital Pandora) and marker-based drawing materials.

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The 156th Anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s Birthday on the New Moon/Solar Eclipse

Sunday February 26th 2017, 3 pm – 5 pm

We will celebrate Steiner’s birthday and the solar eclipse by analyzing his horoscope in the most respectful manner.  Astrologer Victoria Martin will expound on some classic interpretations of Rudolf Steiner’s Birth chart – For instance did you know he was born on a Full Moon, near the zenith of the sky aligned to Saturn? Victoria will also go further by adding the fixed stars, which according to Brian Gray at Steiner College, are basic components in Astrosophy.

The Solar eclipse, on Sunday February 26th 2017 indicates a new phase of Steiner’s influence, which is especially potent for the next six months!

Victoria will also do 3-minute readings for each participant to see where their birthdays fit in Steiner’s horoscope!

This can be even more precise if the entire horoscope of participants is available, so please email your date, time, and place of birth to viccimartin@gmail.com.

We can also look into the 2017 trends if there is interest! And if time allows Hazel Archer Ginsberg will give a brief overview of the phases in Rudolf Steiner’s life.

 $10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society 4249 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago IL. 60618. MAP

For more info. contact Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

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An evening Discourse &  Full day Workshop with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg at

Fostering Sustainable Agriculture through Research, Education and Policy since 1984

What is Anthroposophy?

Friday March 3rd 2017,  Potluck Social 5:30 pm  Lecture –7 pm – 9 pm

A Hands-on Discourse with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

What can the human being (anthropos) of today do to recognize our inherent wisdom (sophia) to access the source of spiritual knowledge, for our own inner development, and for the evolution of the earth and all of humanity?

What would it be like to support each other in community, as we strive to penetrate the mystery of our relationship with the spiritual world?

How does this ‘Spiritual Science’ built on the research of Rudolf Steiner, speak to the riddles of existence: our artistic needs, the truth of karma, the mystery of evil, life after death and so much more?

Come Explore this Modern Path of Initiation with:

Hazel Archer-Ginsberg – Festivals Coordinator & Council Member of the Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch, and the Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society. Founder of Reverse Ritual – Understanding Anthroposophy Through the Rhythms of the Year– Presenter, Poet, & Trans-denominational Minister.

Also:

 Saturday March 4th 2017 –

A Experiential Three Part Workshop* with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity

Some of the topics treated in this experiential workshop are: The nature of the brain, the development of speech, angelic beings, ancient language, Zarathustra, Buddha, & Christ.

‘The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity: Some Results of Spiritual-Scientific Research into Human History and Development’ consists of three sections. Each section was originally a lecture (6, 7, & 8 June 1911) but was subsequently reworked by Steiner & cast into the form of an essay.  It is available without a fee at Rudolf Steiner Archives 

Session #1 – 10 am – 12 noon:
• Introductions
• The divine wisdom working in the human being in the 1st three years of life.
• Through inner striving we can contact again and consciously build on this wisdom which is connected to the Christ impulse.
• Activity- Biography work: Our 1st conscious memory – a preview of the “I”.

Noon – 1:30 pm – Lunch

Session #2 – 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm:
• The childlike condition of humanity in ancient times, directed by higher spiritual beings.
• A look into the evolution of these guiding spirits –progressive as well as regressive –
• Revealing the necessity of the ‘two kinds of evil’.
• The importance of Spiritual Science to avoid error.
• Activity – Labyrinth Walk

3:30 pm – 4 pm – Break

Session #3 – 4 pm – 6 pm:
• A survey of the Post-Atlantean age, our present epoch.
• The Christ connection with the progressive spiritual beings
• Modern science as the work of the regressive spiritual beings
• A peek into the future
• Activity – The Golden Legend & The Rose Cross Mediation: An artistic rendering

*(Workshops can be taken as a whole or individually, details to follow)

Register here

Michael Fields W2493 County Rd ES
East Troy, WI 53120, USA