We begin our journey, like Persephone, into the dark

September 22, 2016Autumn, Celestial Event, Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

22 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: Autumn begins in the Northern Hemisphere, & Spring in the Southern Hemisphere, at the Equinox – 9:21am CDT. This is when the Sun crosses the equator heading south for the season

Our Day-star rises due east & sets due west today. Equinox” comes from the Latin words “equi” meaning “equal” & “nox” meaning “night.” This implies that there will be equal amounts of daylight & darkness, however that is not exactly the case

If the Sun were a point of light & Earth had no atmosphere, everyone would get 12 hours of sunlight & 12 hours of darkness. But the presence of air & the finite size of our star make today 8 minutes longer than 12 hours. This year, the sun will rise at 6:38am CDT on the equinox & will set at 6:47pm

Exactly equal day & night won’t happen until September 25 with sunrise as 6:42 am CDT & sunset at 6:42 pm CDT. This day is known as the Equilux! -“Lux” being Latin for light.

Also, every year when summer turns to fall, Deneb takes over from brighter Vega as the zenith star around the time when twilight fades into night

***

Audrey Hamel

“What is to be the starting force & impulse for events in social & ethical life must come out of the spiritual world.” Rudolf Steiner, New Spiritual Impulses in History” Dornach 16 December, 1917

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Lectures by Rudolf Steiner on this date

1452 – Birthday of Savonarola, an Italian Dominican friar, prophet & preacher active in Renaissance Florence. He was known for his prophecies of civic glory, the destruction of secular art & culture, & his calls for Christian renewal. He denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule & the exploitation of the poor.

While Savonarola intervened with the French king, the Florentines expelled the ruling Medici &, at the friar’s urging, established a “popular” republic, declaring that Florence would be the New Jerusalem, the world center of Christianity.

When Florence refused to join Pope Alexander VI’s Holy League against the French, the Vatican summoned Savonarola to Rome. He disobeyed & further defied the pope by preaching under a ban, highlighting his campaign for reform with processions, bonfires of the vanities, & pious theatricals. In retaliation, the Pope excommunicated him & threatened to place Florence under an interdict. A trial by fire proposed by a rival Florentine preacher to test Savonarola’s divine mandate turned into a fiasco, & popular opinion turned against him. Savonarola & two of his supporting friars were imprisoned. Under torture, Savonarola confessed & the Church condemned, hanged, & burned the three friars in the main square of Florence.

Savonarola’s devotees, the Piagnoni, kept his cause of republican freedom & religious reform alive well into the following century, although the Medici—restored to power in 1512 with the help of the papacy—eventually broke the movement.

1791 – Birthday of Michael Faraday, English physicist & chemist. Although Faraday received little formal education, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. It was by his research on the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a direct current that Faraday established the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics. Faraday also established that magnetism could affect rays of light & that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, & it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became practical for use in technology.

As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the Bunsen burner & the system of oxidation numbers, & popularized terminology such as “anode”, “cathode”, “electrode” & “ion”.

Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear & simple language. Albert Einstein kept a picture of Faraday on his study wall, alongside pictures of Isaac Newton & James Clerk Maxwell. Physicist Ernest Rutherford stated, “When we consider the magnitude and extent of his discoveries and their influence on the progress of science and of industry, there is no honour too great to pay to the memory of Faraday, one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time.”

1991 – The Dead Sea Scrolls are made available to the public for the first time by the Huntington Library

***

Chris Manvell

My POD (Poem Of the Day)

Mabon (an ancient Celtic name for the Autumnal Equinox)

A salmon swallows the nut of wisdom
And leaps from the river’s dark depths –
A bright flash of silver in the bent rays of light

A hawk wheels in the eye of the Sun,
His elongated shadow moves
Over an ancient green mound

A fox gleams gold and russet there at the fringe of the forest
Her eyes glinting secrets
From the coming twilight realm

A Maiden sits silent
Clasping two crossed swords
In elegant equipoise

On his knee the King muses by a deep pool…

Soul tied to the wheel
Crystalized in the last shock of corn
Pierced by the oblique sun lit spear

With eyes that see
Down into the root
Where autumn grain waits
To Be
Easter-Tides’ Seed

The death of bedazzled day
And the dawn of focused night
Meet in symmetry

Halfway
Thru the cycle
We enter the return

Sail West Beloved Sun King
We follow You
Into the Dawning Dark

~hag

***

At the Autumnal Equinox – the wheel of the year turns & we find ourselves moving into the time of the harvest. In the tropical zodiac, at equinox, we say the Sun is crossing the celestial equator, moving from Virgo into Libra, the sign of the scales – a time to take stock. Are the scales balanced? Do they tip & spill? Are they full? Do we know what to harvest & what to plow under? Can we identify & cut away outworn habits & emotional baggage that can choke our growth?

But in sidereal astrosophy we see the Sun in relation to the actual constellations as they are now, with the Sun actually appearing in the crown of stars in the constellation of the Virgin.

When we use the tropical zodiac, the 4-foldness of the Equinoxes & Solstices form The Cross, which reminds us of an event that occurred only once in history, at the time of the incarnation of Christ. Then, the start of Spring was at 0 degrees of Aries, the Ram – the 1^st sign in the zodiac.

At the Equinoxes we have the horizontal beam, a balance of light & darkness. At the Solstices we have the vertical beam, an opposition of light & dark. At Autumn Equinox the Sun is balanced in Libra, which then marks the transition from light to dark. Libra is a threshold, a gateway between the upper chakras & the lower chakras. In the upper signs, from Aries thru Virgo we have a memory of the cosmic human being before we were formed on Earth. From Libra to Pisces, the human form meets the physical world. So we can look at the upper half of the zodiac as being related to our past cosmic creation by the ‘gods’ & the lower half of the zodiac as our human journey of ‘The fall’ & then hopefully our redemption out of our own ego forces.

The Sidereal zodiac shows us the vernal point has moved thru the ‘procession of the equinoxes’, (The Sun moves backward thru the constellations) so that it is now descending thru the lower half of the zodiac, taking humanity along on its evolutionary journey.

Adorning this great cross, formed from the 4 Cardinal Points of the Equinoxes & Solstices, are the 7 Festivals: Michaelmas, Advent, Christmas, Easter-tide Ascension, Whitsun & St. John’s-tide. These festivals are the 7 Cosmic Roses unfurling from the center of The Cross.

So today on this Autumnal Equinox, we can contemplate & celebrate this solar moment of equality & balance, experienced by everyone around the globe. We can also think about how the world has changed, how the constellations have moved on, how The Christ has united with the Earth, & is now working in us to redeem our evolution.

We can take our initiation in hand when we consciously co-create the festivals in the solar-cycle of the year, working to unfold the 7 Roses of transformation within, & out in the world.

And so it is my friends, that we begin our journey, like Persephone, into the dark of the year…Feel your power go within, like the seed planted deep within the darkness of the Earth…We must be initiated into these dark mysteries before we can truly celebrate life’s renewal…

The apples fall from the tree, the corn & grain are gathered in, the grapes are crushed for wine…The Sun God is sacrificed to the night & the fertile Mother assumes the face of the Wise Crone – the Harvest Hag challenging us to face our shadow…

Balanced Blessings

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Walking the Peace Path

September 21, 2016Autumn, Lecture, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

21 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: As summer ends, the Sagittarius Teapot moves west of due south during evening and tips increasingly far over, as if pouring out the last of summer. Look for it left of Mars

Although autumn arrives with the equinox tomorrow, the Summer Triangle remains prominent in the evening sky. Look high in the west after darkness falls & your eyes will fall on the brilliant star Vega in the constellation Lyra the Harp. Vega is the brightest member of the Triangle. The second-brightest star, Altair in Aquila the Eagle, lies southeast of Vega. The asterism’s dimmest member, Deneb in Cygnus the Swan, stands east-northeast of Vega

***

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Composite Caravaggio & Rembrandt

Feast of St. Matthew, a 1st-century Galilean, the son of Alpheus. As a tax collector he was literate in Aramaic & Greek. After his call, Matthew invited Jesus home for a feast. On seeing this, the Scribes & the Pharisees criticized Jesus for eating with tax collectors & sinners. This prompted Jesus to answer, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ I did not come to call the righteous but sinners” (Matthew 9:12-13)

Matthew – The patron Saint of accountants. His symbol is the Winged Man or Angel
His ‘Motto’: Scientia Potentia Est – ‘Knowledge is Power’

World Peace Day

19 BC – Deathday of Virgil, Roman poet

1780 – American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point.

1792 – French Revolution: The National Convention declares France a republic and abolishes the absolute monarchy

1860 – Deathday of Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher & author

1866 – Birthday of H. G. Wells

1912 – (for Fuji) Birthday of Chuck Jones, American animator, producer, & screenwriter

1934 – A large typhoon hits western Honshū, Japan, killing 3,036 people

1938 – The Great Hurricane of 1938 makes landfall on Long Island in New York. The death toll is estimated at 500-700 people

1942 – In Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, Nazis murder 2,588 Jews

1972 – Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos signs Proclamation № 1081, placing the entire country under martial law marking the beginning of his authoritarian rule

1976 – Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D.C. He is a member of the Chilean socialist government of Salvador Allende, overthrown in 1973 by Augusto Pinochet

1991 – Armenia is granted independence from Soviet Union

1993 – Russian President Boris Yeltsin suspends parliament & scraps the constitution, triggering the Russian constitutional crisis

1996 – The Defense of Marriage Act passes the United States Congress. The law prohibited federal recognition of same-sex marriage, while allowing states to adopt any marital definition of their choosing

1998 – Deathday of John Wood, Anthroposophical translator

1999 – Chi-Chi earthquake occurs in central Taiwan, leaving over 2,400 people dead

***

~Walking the Peace Path

Gathering hot iron

From the falling stars

Climbing the Tree of Life

To anoint Michael’s sword

~hag

***

Lecture 2. Steiner says that since the dragon is a super-sensible being in the sense of world — it attracts the super-sensible elemental forces that stream toward humanity out of nature and unites with them, with the result that the human being, instead of releasing the plant elementals from their spell through our soul and Gemüt, unites them with the Dragon – allows them to perish with the Dragon in our lower nature.

The elemental beings dwelling in minerals, plants, and animals must rise to a higher existence in the evolutionary process. This can only be accomplished by passing through human beings. Steiner says we have a cosmic aim within the entire world evolution; linked with the further development of these elemental beings.

When we enter into a right relationship with them, they can attain to this higher stage of evolution.”

“…We must acquire a feeling, a Gemüt content, telling us that every blossom bears testimony to the existence of an enchanted elemental being within it; and we will learn to feel the longing in this elemental being to be released by us, instead of being delivered up to the Dragon. And when the flowers wither in the autumn we will know that we have succeeded in contributing a bit to the progress of spirit in the world, in enabling an elemental being to slip out of its plant when the blossoms wither and fall and become seed. But only if we can permeate ourselves with the powerful strength of Michael are we able to lead this elemental being up into the spirit for which it yearns.

“…We must really live into & experience the cycles of the seasons. We can experience spring as the birth of elemental beings longing for the spirit, and in autumn, activate their liberation from the dying plants and withering blossoms. We can sense the transformation of nature as part of our own destiny: we will coalesce with all that grows there, because our free individuality can pour itself out in sacrifice into the cosmos. — this is how we can contribute to Michael’s Conflict with the Dragon.”

“…So can you see? that what leads to true a Michaelmas Festival must be an event of the human Gemüt, a Gemüt event that can once more experience the cycle of the seasons as a living reality…”

”…the ability to experience in our blood circulation the pulse-beat of outer existence as we do our own innermost being that is the preparation needed for the Michael Festival.”

Are you prepared to go into the dark?

See you there

Xox ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Look at the Words in your Heart

September 20, 2016Autumn, Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Lecture, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

20 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: Although Mercury passed between the Sun & Earth just eight days ago, the planet named for the fleet-footed messenger god in Roman mythology lives up to its reputation this week as it climbs into view before sunrise. You can find the innermost planet above the eastern horizon 30 minutes before sunup. Mercury climbs higher & brightens rapidly as it heads toward greatest elongation next week, when it appears a half-hour before sunrise

Anne North

This is the time of year when, during the evening, the dim Little Dipper pours into the bowl of the Big Dipper way down below. The Big Dipper will pour it back in the evenings of spring

***

Looking at the past to see the present, co-creating the future:

“History, historical life, will only be seen in the right light when a true consciousness of the connection of the so-called living with the so-called dead can be developed” – The Living and the Dead by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, 5th February, 1918

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

622 – Muhammad & Abu Bakr arrived in Medina

1378 – Cardinal Robert of Geneva, called by some the “Butcher of Cesena“, is elected as Pope Clement VII, beginning the Papal schism. He was the 1^st antipope residing in Avignon, France

1498 – The Nankai earthquake generates a tsunami that washes away the building housing the statue of the Great Buddha at Kōtoku-in in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan. Over 10,000 die

1519 – Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with 270 men on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe

1737 – The Walking Purchase– between the Penn family, the proprietors of Pennsylvania, & the Lenape Tribe (also known as the Delaware). This document may have been an unsigned, unratified treaty, or even an outright forgery (Encyclopædia Britannica refers to it as a “land swindle”. The Penns’ agents began selling land, an area of 1,200,000 acres, in the Lehigh Valley to colonists while the Lenape still inhabited the area

1893 – Charles Duryea road-tests the first American-made gasoline-powered automobile

1906 – Founding of the Paracelsus Branch, Basel Switzerland

1913 – The laying of the Foundation Stone of the 1^st Goetheanum

1913 – Founding of the Moscow Branch of the Anthroposophical Society

1933 – Deathday of Annie Besant. In 1890 Besant met Helena Blavatsky. She became a member of the Theosophical Society & a prominent lecturer. She established the first overseas Lodge of the International Order of Co-Freemasonry, Le Droit Humain. Over the next few years she established lodges in many parts of the British Empire. In 1907 she became president of the Theosophical Society, whose international headquarters were in Adyar, Madras. She also became involved in politics in India, joining the Indian National Congress. When World War I broke out in 1914, she helped launch the Home Rule League to campaign for democracy in India. This led to her election as president of the India National Congress. In the late 1920s, Besant travelled to the United States with her protégé & adopted son Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom she claimed was the new Messiah & incarnation of Buddha. Krishnamurti rejected these claims in 1929. She is thought to be the reincarnation of Giordano Bruno

1941 – Holocaust 403 Jews (128 men, 176 women & 99 children) were murdered by Einsatzkommando 3 in Nemencing, Latvia.

1942 – Holocaust in Letychiv, Ukraine. In the course of two days the German SS murders at least 3,000 Jews

1973 – Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes tennis match at the Houston Astrodome

***

~The shining ones laughed

Slapping each other’s backs

“Have you forgotten so soon

What you have learned in the lotus pool?

Try not thinking so much.

Look at the words in your heart.”

I looked & I saw…

~hag

***

Today I begin a series on Michaelmas. This year I have been working with

MICHAELMAS AND THE SOUL-FORCES OF MAN By RUDOLF STEINER

Summary by Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Lecture 1. How can humanity, the earth citizen, become once more a citizen of the cosmos? The expansion of life’s horizon into cosmic reaches brings the human being into the picture of Michael’s Conflict with the Dragon.

The Dragon is not found in the sense world. Where is he? The dragon lives within the human being. “…the outer cosmic conflict of Michael and the Dragon was transferred to the inner human being, because only in human nature could the Dragon now find his sphere of action.”

Because of that Michael now works with us to fight the dragon within human nature.

Steiner gives this picture of the dragon writhing around the animalistic part of humanity, even coiling around the heart; but then — behind us, at the back of the head — the outer cosmic figure of Michael, towering, radiant, retaining his cosmic nature but reflecting it in the higher human nature, so that our etheric body reflects etherically the cosmic figure of Michael. Then there would be visible in the human head — but working down into the heart — the power of Michael, crushing the Dragon and causing blood to flow down from the heart to the limbs.” So we can put our will into action

“…. In the intellect we are isolated from the world, because everyone has their own head, and in that head, their own thoughts. But In our Gemüt we cannot do that, the Gemüt is not dependent upon the head, but on the rhythmic system, bringing us back to where we belong, as a being in the cosmos.”

The Gemüt, as meaning something like: ‘the mind warmed by a loving heart and stimulated by the soul’s imaginative power’.

“…So with our Gemüt we can say: The power of the Dragon is working within me, I might not see it — but I can feel it as a force that wants to drag me down below myself. But in the spirit I see the luminous Angel whose cosmic task has always been the vanquishing of the Dragon. I concentrate my Gemüt upon this glowing figure, I let its light stream into my Gemüt, so that my illumined and warmed Gemüt will bear within it the strength of Michael. And out of a free resolution I will be able, through my alliance with Michael, to conquer the Dragon’s might in my own lower nature.”

“…this activated Gemüt enters into a living relationship with the whole cosmos the moment it indeed comes to life.

Life will not have a true soul content until we can develop cosmic impulses in our Gemüt.”

Tomorrow I will bring my summary of lecture 2

Xox ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

PS. I have fixed the problem with the comments. It is now functioning, so please feel free to continue to co-create the conversation

***

Current Festival & Program Events

Becoming Mystic Activists

September 19, 2016Insight, Poetry, Remembering, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

19 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: Once Venus sets during evening twilight, Mars becomes the brightest point of light in the sky. The Red Planet shines high in the west-southwest in early evening. Mars lies among the background stars of southeastern Ophiuchus.

Arcturus shines in the west these evenings as twilight fades out. Equally-bright Capella is rising in the north-northeast.

***

“What is to be the starting force & impulse for events in social & ethical life must come out of the spiritual world.” Rudolf Steiner, New Spiritual Impulses in History” Dornach 16 December, 1917

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

The Feast of San Gennaro

The Feast of Our Lady of La Salette*

634 – Siege of Damascus: The Rashidun Arabs under Khalid ibn al-Walid capture Damascus from the Byzantine Empire

1692 –The only death by peine forte et dure in American history was Giles Corey, who was (“pressed to death”) during the Salem witch trials, after he refused to enter a plea in the judicial proceeding. According to legend, his last words as he was being crushed were “More weight”, even though he was thought to be dead as the weight was applied

*1846 – Two French shepherd children, Mélanie Calvat & Maximin Giraud, experience a Marian apparition on a mountaintop near La Salette, France, now known as Our Lady of La Salette. They returned from the mountain where they had been minding cows & reported seeing “a beautiful lady” on Mount Sous-Les Baisses, weeping bitterly. They described her as sitting with her elbows resting on her knees & her face buried in her hands. She was clothed in a white robe studded with pearls; & a gold colored apron; white shoes & roses about her feet & high head-dress. She wore a crucifix suspended by a necklace from her neck.

According to their account, she continued to weep even as she spoke to them, first in French, then in their own dialect. After giving a secret to each child, the apparition walked into a hill & vanished. The following day the children’s account of the apparition was put into writing & signed by the visionaries & those who had heard the story.

According to the children’s account, the Virgin invited people to respect the repose of the seventh day, & the name of God. She sorrowfully threatened punishment, in particular a scarcity of potatoes, which would rot. The context of these punishments places the warning just prior to the winter of 1846–1847, which was in Europe, & especially in Ireland & in France, a period of famine in the months which followed the apparition. This was one of the factors of the apparition’s popular appeal

1864 – American Civil War: Third Battle of Winchester: Union troops under General Philip Sheridan defeat a Confederate force commanded by General Jubal Early. With over 50,000 troops engaged it was the largest battle fought in the Shenandoah Valley & was not only militarily decisive in that region of Virginia but also played a role in securing Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1864

1881 – U.S. President James A. Garfield dies of wounds suffered in a July 2 shooting. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker, at the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station in Washington. Among those at the station was Robert Todd Lincoln, who sixteen years before had watched his father die from an assassin’s bullet. Vice President Chester A. Arthur becomes President upon Garfield’s death

1893 – Women’s suffrage: In New Zealand, the Electoral Act of 1893 is consented to by the governor giving all women in New Zealand the right to vote

1812 – Deathday of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the banking dynasty

1940 – Witold Pilecki is voluntarily captured and sent to Auschwitz to smuggle out information and start a resistance

1946 – The Council of Europe is founded following a speech by Winston Churchill at the University of Zurich, calling for a “United States of Europe”

1952 – The US bars Charlie Chaplin from re-entering the country after a trip to England

1957 – First American underground nuclear bomb test (part of Operation Plumbbob)

1971 – Deathday of Lory Maier-Smith, the 1^st Eurythmist

1976 – Turkish Airlines Flight 452 hits the Taurus Mountains, killing all 154 passengers & crew

1976 – Two Imperial Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom II jets fly out to investigate a UFO when both independently lose instrumentation & communications as they approach, only to have them restored upon withdrawal

1985 – A Violent. 8.0m earthquake hits Greater Mexico City area, killing at least 5,000 people, & destroys about 400 buildings

1989 – A terrorist bomb explodes UTA Flight 772 in mid-air above the Tùnùrù Desert, Niger, killing 171

***

My POD (Poem Of the Day)

I came into being thru sheer will alone…

I dance like spitting spirals of evolving DNA…

A frenetic bird-heart full of secrets…

I grow as I seek & teach & learn…

I change as change does…in all ways…

My mind is a heart on fire…

My soul an eternal fountain-flame…

I rise like incense into this moment’s air prayer

Enclosed in a spiked shower of nova stars…

I am what I have made…

I am the seed of every Dark Goddess…

As magic as the night…As hard as light…

I am…

Your last 3 exhales distilled into the breath of now…

4 ecstatic screams from the edge of the elements…

The phoenix brooding on a potent pyre…

I am…The hag

Reclaiming the Healing Ways

Of the Wise Witch-Crone

***

Sophie Takata

We are moving ever closer into the eye of the storm, that will decide the future of humanity & the planet. It is crucial for us to know, as the crisis deepens, that what will look & feel like destruction, can be an opportunity to strip away delusion.

The secret of this storm is that it is a birthing – & it is going to demand everything of us. Will we purify our hearts & galvanize our wills to ensure that the new Divine Humanity can be born?

Greed is exploding, Nature is bleeding. Weapons of mass destruction are proliferating & religions are retreating into fundamentalism. The rich 1 per cent are locking the world into a materialism that leaves the rest of the world starving. The corporate media is feeding us sleep inducing trivialities, when what we need to is to be woken up to the spirit behind reality. How am I living? What am I risking at this time of unprecedented crisis?

Can I awaken during this dark night of the species, & stand in uprightness? This ongoing crisis is overloading, yet, if we can stand, we can see, that it is offering humanity these intensities to expand & shatter the hard heart, to open the way, to re-write his-story, by opening the mind in a brainstorming that can co-create a world of love & justice.

We need to become mystic activists – Mystics must get active & activists must become mystic. We must learn to act from a divine peace, that will feed us divine wisdom – To act from a loving, forgiving a heart.

When we learn how to ask, we will receive.

Then this world can become the living kingdom of a Divine Humanity.

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Ideas are for Anthroposophy-Vessels, formed out of love

September 18, 2016Insight, Lecture, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul~hag

18 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: About a half hour after sunset, you shouldn’t have much trouble spotting Venus very low in the west-southwest through the twilight, if you have a clear view down that low. But can you see twinkly little Spica there beneath Venus, perhaps as twilight fades further?

Sandro Botticelli

The Moon reaches perigee, the closest point in its orbit around Earth, at exactly noon CDT. It is then 224,872 miles from us.

Stones to Bread: Mars conjuncts the star Lesath in Scorpio’s stinger, & Venus conjuncts the star Spica, the sheaf of wheat of the Virgin.

***

Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction. ~ Ray Bradbury

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Dierec Bouts the Older

900- Feast Day of Saint Richardis, was the Holy Roman Empress, born in Alsace. She married Charles the Fat & was crowned with him in Rome by Pope John VIII The marriage was childless.

Charles’ reign was marked by internal and external strife, caused primarily by the constant plundering of Norman raiders on the northern French coast. By 887, Charles appears to have succumbed to fits of madness. During this crisis, Richardis attempted to rule in her husband’s stead, but was unsuccessful. In an effort to bring down the over-powerful and hated Liutward, Charles’ archchancellor, he & Richardis were accused by Charles of adultery. Charles asserted that their marriage was unconsummated & demanded a divorce.

In a bid to assure him of her innocence, she finally assented to an ordeal by fire. Barefoot, & wearing a shirt covered in wax, the flames nevertheless refused to touch her. Disheartened by her husband’s continued mistrust, Richardis left the imperial palace & wandered into the forest. There she was visited by an angel, who ordered her to found a convent in a certain spot, which a bear would indicate to her. In Val d’Eleon, at the banks of the river, she saw a bear scratching in the dirt. There she built the abbey of Andlau.

An alternative legend recounts that Richardis found the mother bear grieving over her dead cub in the forest. When Richardis held the cub, it returned to life. After the working of this miracle, both mother & cub remained devoted to the saint for the rest of their lives.

1793 – The first cornerstone of the Capitol building is laid by George Washington

1812 – The 1812 Fire of Moscow dies down after destroying more than three-quarters of the city. Napoleon returns from the Petrovsky Palace to the Moscow Kremlin, spared from the fire.

1850 – The Fugitive Slave Act passed by the United States Congress as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests & Northern Free-Soilers. It required that all escaped slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters & that officials & citizens of free states had to cooperate in this law. Abolitionists nicknamed it the “Bloodhound Law” for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves

1851 – First publication of The New-York Daily Times, which later becomes The New York Times

1873 – Panic of 1873: The U.S. bank Jay Cooke & Company declares bankruptcy, triggering a series of bank failures.

1882 – The Pacific Stock Exchange opens.

1895 – Booker T. Washington delivers the “Atlanta compromise” address. The agreement was that Southern blacks would work &submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic education & due process in law. Blacks would not agitate for equality, integration, or justice, & Northern whites would fund black educational charities

1906 – A typhoon with tsunami kills an estimated 10,000 people in Hong Kong

William-Adolphe Bouguereau

1909 – 1^st mention by Rudolf Steiner of the two Jesus Children. GA 114

1910 – In Amsterdam, 25,000 demonstrate for general suffrage

1916 – 1^st lecture by Rudolf Steiner on the Mexican Mysteries

1919 – The Netherlands gives women the right to vote

1927 – The Columbia Broadcasting System goes on the air

1936 – Deathday of Konrad Burdach,

1939 – The Nazi propaganda broadcaster known as Lord Haw-Haw begins transmitting.

1940 – The British liner SS City of Benares is sunk by German submarine U-48; those killed include 77 child refugees

1943 – World War II: The Jews of Minsk are massacred at Sobibór

1944 – World War II: The British submarine HMS Tradewind torpedoes Jun’yō Maru, 5,600 killed

1947 – The National Security Council & the Central Intelligence Agency are established in the United States under the National Security Act

1960 – Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations

1962 – Deathday of Therese Neumann, mystic, stigmatic

1988 – End of pro-democracy uprisings in Myanmar after a bloody military coup. Thousands, mostly monks & civilians (primarily students), are killed

2001 – First mailing of anthrax letters from Trenton, New Jersey in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

2007 – Buddhist monks join anti-government protesters in Myanmar, starting what some call the Saffron Revolution

Lectures by Rudolf Steiner on this date

***

Van James

Calendar of the Soul Twenty-sixth Week (9-17-16 to 9-23-16)

O Nature, your maternal life

I bear within the essence of my will.

And my will’s fiery energy

Shall steel my spirit striving,

That sense of self springs forth from it

To hold me in myself.

~Rudolf Steiner

***

Ideas are for Anthroposophy

Vessels, formed out of love,

Into which the being of humanity, spiritually,

Is brought from the spiritual worlds.

Clothed in thoughts formed with love

The light of true humanity

Shall shine through Anthroposophy.

And knowledge is but the form

In which through humanity

It shall be possible

That the true spirit from the widths of the world

Will focus in human hearts

It may enlighten human thought.

And as Anthroposophy

Really can only be grasped through love,

Therefore it is love creating

If it is grasped by the true being of humanity.

Therefore, in the midst of furious hatred

A place of love could be built in Dornach.

And words

Will not be coined in the Anthroposophical realm

As they are usually coined today.

Words are formed

That are all intrinsically pleas.

Every word in Anthroposophy

If it is spoken in the right sense

Is fundamentally a plea

A reverent plea:

A plea

That the spirit may come down to humankind.

~ Rudolf Steiner, From the 1922 The Christmas Foundation; Beginning of a Cosmic Age

May Human Beings Hear it…XOX ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Cognitive Ritual

~Confessions of a Modern Rosicrucian

We begin our journey, like Persephone, into the dark

Walking the Peace Path

Look at the Words in your Heart

Becoming Mystic Activists

Ideas are for Anthroposophy-Vessels, formed out of love

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