Penetrate to the heart of the core of the root…

September 17, 2016Autumn, Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Meditation, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

17 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: Now the Moon shines below the Great Square of Pegasus. From the Great Square’s left corner extends a big line of three stars, running to the lower left, that mark the head, backbone & leg of the constellation Andromeda. The line of three includes the Square’s corner

Upper left from the end of this line, you’ll find W-shaped Cassiopeia tilting up

Skywatchers with an unobstructed horizon toward the west-southwest should keep an eye out for Venus this week, minutes after sunset, it shines so brilliantly that it stands out against the bright twilight. The star Spica, is to her lower left

***

I turn to history not for lessons but to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for myself a sense of responsibility for the state of the human conscience ~ Zbigniew Herbert (from Chris Manvell)

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1179 – Deathday of Hildegard of Bingen, “the Sybil of the Rhine” a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, & polymath.

She is considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. One of her works as a composer, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama, the oldest surviving morality play. She wrote theological, botanical, & medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, & poems, while supervising miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, Scivias. She is also noted for the invention of a constructed language known as Lingua Ignota.

Hildegard 1st saw “The Shade of the Living Light” at the age of three. Hildegard was hesitant to share her visions, but at the age of 42, Hildegard received instruction from God, to “write down that which you see and hear.” Still hesitant to record her visions, Hildegard became physically ill. The illustrations recorded in the book of Scivias were visions that Hildegard experienced, causing her great suffering: “But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] I set my hand to the writing. While I was doing it, I sensed, the deep profundity of scriptural exposition; and, raising myself from illness by the strength I received, I brought this work to a close – though just barely – in ten years. (…) And I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, ‘Cry out therefore, and write thus!’

Hildegard’s visions caused her to see humans as “living sparks” of God’s love.

On 17 September 1179, when Hildegard died, her sisters claimed they saw two streams of light appear in the skies & cross over the room where she was dying.

“Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around Him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honor. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground, and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along. Thus am I, a feather on the breath of God.”

Howard Chandler Christy

1787 – The United States Constitution is signed in Philadelphia

1859 – Joshua A. Norton declares himself “Norton I, Emperor of the United States.” Born in England, Norton spent most of his early life in South Africa, he emigrated to San Francisco with an inheritance, but he lost his fortune investing in Peruvian rice & Norton’s public prominence faded. He reemerged to lay claim to the position of Emperor of the United States, & ‘Protector of Mexico’. He was treated deferentially in San Francisco, &currency issued in his name was honored in the establishments he frequented.

Though some considered him insane or eccentric, citizens of San Francisco celebrated his regal presence & his proclamations, such as his order that the United States Congress be dissolved by force & his numerous decrees calling for a bridge crossing connecting San Francisco to Oakland, &a corresponding tunnel to be built under San Francisco Bay.

At his funeral two days later, nearly 30,000 people packed the streets of San Francisco to pay homage. Norton has been immortalized as the basis of characters in the literature of writers Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christopher Moore, Maurice De Bevere, Selma Lagerlöf, & Neil Gaiman

1908 – The Wright Flyer flown by Orville Wright, with Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge as passenger, crashes, killing Selfridge. He becomes the first airplane fatality

1916 –Manfred von Richthofen (“The Red Baron“), a flying ace of the German Luftstreitkräfte, wins his first aerial combat near Cambrai, France, in World War I

1928 – The Okeechobee hurricane strikes southeastern Florida, killing more than 2,500 people. It is the third deadliest natural disaster in United States history, behind the Galveston hurricane of 1900 & the 1906 San Francisco earthquake

1939 –The Soviet Union joins Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in World War II

1939 –German submarine U-29 sinks the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous in World War II

1948 – The Lehi, also known as the Stern gang, assassinates Count Folke Bernadotte, who was appointed by the United Nations to mediate between the Arab nations & Israel. Lehi = “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel” was a Zionist paramilitary organization founded by Avraham (“Yair”) Stern in Palestine. Its aim was to evict the British authorities from Palestine by force, allowing unrestricted immigration of Jews & the formation of a Jewish state, a ‘new totalitarian Hebrew republic’

1961 – Deathday of Dag Hammarskjöld, Swedish diplomat, economist, author & the second secretary-general of the United Nations. Soon after his appointment Hammarskjöld was interviewed on radio by Edward R. Murrow. In this talk he declared: “But the explanation of how man should live a life of active social service in full harmony with himself as a member of the community of spirit, I found in the writings of those great medieval mystics [Meister Eckhart and Jan van Ruysbroek] for whom ‘self-surrender’ had been the way to self-realization, and who in ‘singleness of mind’ and ‘inwardness’ had found strength to say yes to every demand which the needs of their neighbours made them face, and to say yes also to every fate life had in store for them when they followed the call of duty as they understood it.”

He was en route to negotiate a cease-fire on 18 September when his plane crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia. Hammarskjöld & fifteen others died in the crash. The circumstances of the incident are still not clear. There is some evidence that suggests the plane was shot down. Göran Björkdahl (a Swedish aid worker) wrote in 2011 that he believed Dag Hammarskjöld’s 1961 death was a murder committed in part to benefit mining companies like Union Minière, after Hammarskjöld had made the UN intervene in the Katanga crisis. Björkdahl based his assertion on interviews with witnesses of the plane crash & on archival documents. Former U.S. President Harry Truman commented that Hammarskjöld “was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said ‘when they killed him’.”

1978 – The Camp David Accords brokered by President Jimmy Carter, is signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin

2001 – The New York Stock Exchange reopens for trading after the September 11 attacks, the longest closure since the Great Depression

2006 – Fourpeaked Mountain in Alaska erupts, marking the first eruption for the long-dormant volcano in at least 10,000 years

2011 – Occupy Wall Street movement begins in Zuccotti Park, New York City

***

Hilma Af Klint

~In slanted sunlight O my soul

The ripening fruits of my thinking are aroused in certainty,

For I sense an essence kindred to my own…

Joyfully I can perceive

The Autumn-Spirt waking…

& then I know

That winter will spring in me

Like Summer of the soul…

***

Hilma Af Klint

Inner Sanctum – a guided imagination:

Let us take our breath into our thinking, bringing our awareness inward, into the secret reaches of our inner sanctum…

Penetrate to the heart of the core of the root…

Peer down through the cracks in the surface, all the way to the center…

Treat the darkness there, as the source, of light, a cleverly disguised treasure, waiting to be re-discovered…a repository of raw material that will fuel the fires of inspiration, a place where we can go to practice the high art of redemption…

Let’s dare to be curious about the amazing sacraments that lie beneath the obvious questions…To open that mysterious door, that leads to the even more mysterious door, that will take us to the most private, yet inclusive, fertile oasis of all…as we aspire to wrestle tenderly with the unripe side of our nature, until it agrees to share its hidden treasures with the rest of us…

Then the immediate future, the eternal now, will bring cathartic revelations leading to spiritual insights & ingenious changes in the way we dance our life…

You are potentially a genius, we all are…Perhaps not in the same way that Einstein & Beethoven were, but still: We possess some brilliant capacity or set of skills that is exquisitely unique…

We are a masterpiece unlike any other that has ever lived…& you know what…the precise instructions we need to ripen into that glorious Genie have always been with us…The master plan…our special mission…our personal soul code…our secret song, that says, it’s our birthright to dance daily with the Divine Intelligence…

We have the power & the privilege to ask ‘The Source’ very specific questions about what we need to do NOW in order to activate more of our soul’s code, & to then receive a very specific answer…

So what question will you ask the Divine Intelligence today, as you commune in the sacred dance of yourself? …

Breathe in the Q breathe out the answer…open to receive it…breathe in the Q as you embody your answer in the healing moment of the now…

The Question is Love & Love Is the Answer…

Breathe in the Q breathe out the answer…& as you let yourself ripen & become the answer…just breathe & be…

And then slowly come, slowly come back into the body of this now…breathe in the now…& begin to renew your connection to the circle of life…bring your awareness back to the unity of the universe…into the sacred dance of your life…with the milk & manna still lingering on your lips…mingling with the salt of your skin…ready to be turned into honey-mead…we take the marriage feast back to the ring, into the circle that never stops…

Then Out into the world, to feed life with Loves healing mystery…grounded in every cell of our bodies…connected to the stars in our eyes…lived with every breath…as we take in the power we’ve raised in our imaginative thinking to fuel & feed our ‘balance in Change’…

See you in the circle

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

***

Michaelmas Festival: 7pm –9pm Friday 30 September, 2016

Optional Community Potluck Dinner 5pm – 6:45pm at The Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago

Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning

7pm – The Midwest Eurythmy Group will perform the Michaelmas Verse from Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul

Activating Our ‘Gemut’: The mind warmed by a loving heart & stimulated by the soul’s imaginative power – Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Copper Rod Eurythmy: ALL

If I’m to be a valiant knight, Then there’s a battle I must fight , And I must choose right from the start, Not strength of arm But strength of heart, My sword shall of good steel be made, And love the keenness of the blade

Grimm’s Tale “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” by Laura Donkel

Verse for the Michaelic Age: ALL

We must eradicate from the soul all fear and terror of what approaches us from the future. We must acquire serenity in all feelings and sensations about the future.

We must look forward with absolute equanimity to whatever may come. And we must think only that whatever comes is given to us by a cosmic guidance full of wisdom.

It is part of what we must learn in this age, namely, to live without any security in material existence and to live with pure trust in the ever-present help of the spiritual world.

Truly, nothing else will do if our courage is not to fail us. For this let us seek awakening to the reality of the spirit from within ourselves, every morning and every evening. ~Rudolf Steiner

Piano & Voice – Kristen Wray & David Wray performing Nacht und Träume + Ganymed – By Franz Schubert. Kristen Wray is a fiber and metal weaving artist, an energy healing practitioner, as well as a classically trained singer. David Wray is a classics professor at the University of Chicago specializing in ancient Roman poetry. Kristen and David regularly perform together in music student recitals on the university campus.

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

For more info. Contact Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer Ginsberg Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

Eclipse of the Harvest Moon in Virgo

September 16, 2016Insight, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

16 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: Full Moon exact at 11:54am CDT. Since this is the Full Moon closest to next week’s autumnal equinox, it is called the Harvest Moon. In early autumn, the Full Moon rises about half an hour later each night compared with a normal lag close to 50 minutes. The added early evening illumination helps farmers bringing in their crops.

This Harvest Moon also passes through Earth’s outer shadow today, bringing a penumbral lunar eclipse, which belongs to the Saros 147 series, & is number 8 of 70 eclipses in the series.

At the peak, which occurs at 8:44pm CDT, 91 percent of Luna will be immersed in the shadow & viewers across Europe, Asia, Africa, & Australia will see a distinct dusky shading over the Moon’s northern half.

But here in the US our satellite will look completely illuminated all night. You can find it rising in the east around sunset & peaking in the south by 1 am. The Moon lies among the dim background stars of Pisces, due south of the Great Square of Pegasus.

For an Astrosophy take on Virgo see https://sway.com/QHLPDrhBqJZW49FL

***

Reineke-Fuchs

Correction does much, but encouragement does more. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1701 – James Francis Edward Stuart, sometimes called the “Old Pretender“, becomes the Jacobite claimant to the thrones of England & Scotland

1732– In Campo Maior, Portugal, a storm hits the Armory & a violent explosion ensues, killing two thirds of its inhabitants over 30,000 people!

1863 – Robert College of Istanbul-Turkey, the first American educational institution outside the United States, is founded by Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist

1893 – Settlers make a land run for prime land in the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma

1908 – The General Motors Corporation is founded.

1920 – The Wall Street bombing: A bomb in a horse wagon explodes in front of the J. P. Morgan building in New York City killing 38 & injuring 400. The bombing was never solved, although investigators & historians believe it was carried out by Galleanists (Italian anarchists), a group responsible for a series of bombings the previous year. The attack was related to postwar social unrest, labor struggles, & anti-capitalist agitation in the United States

1922 – Founding of the Christian Community in Dornach by Rudolf Steiner

1925 – (For Fugi) Birthday of B.B. King

1947 – Typhoon Kathleen hits Saitama, Tokyo, at least 1,930 killed

1955 – The military coup to unseat President Juan Perón of Argentina is launched at midnight

1959 – The first successful photocopier, the Xerox 914, is introduced in a demonstration on live television from New York City

1961 – The United States National Hurricane Research Project drops eight cylinders of silver iodide into the eyewall of Hurricane Esther. Wind speed reduces by 10%, giving rise to Project Stormfury

1961 – Typhoon Nancy, with possibly the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone, makes landfall in Osaka, Japan, killing 173 people

1977 – Deathday of Maria Callas, Greek operatic soprano

1978 – The 7.4 Mw earthquake affects the city of Tabas, Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). At least 15,000 people were killed

1987 – The Montreal Protocol is signed to protect the ozone layer from depletion

1990 – The railroad between the People’s Republic of China & Kazakhstan is completed at Dostyk, adding a sizable link to the concept of the Eurasian Land Bridge

1992 – Black Wednesday: The pound is forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism by currency speculators & is forced to devalue against the German mark.

1994 – The British government lifts the broadcasting ban imposed against members of Sinn Féin & Irish paramilitary groups

2004 – Hurricane Ivan makes landfall in Gulf Shores, Alabama as a Category 3 hurricane, killing 124

2007 – One-Two-GO Airlines Flight 269 carrying 128 crew & passengers crashes in Thailand killing 89 people

***

My POD (Poem Of the Day)

~In the grey twilight, no figs ripened,

No honey dripped from patient trees, no fragrant boughs soothed…

In that place of hidden things

I was made of nothing

The stone was wet & cold

The thick sky loomed

& bid me enter further

~hag

***

Eclipse of the Harvest Moon in Virgo

“…When there is an eclipse of the moon, the man of today merely says: “Now the earth comes between the sun and the moon; hence we see the shadow cast upon the moon by the earth.” That is the physical explanation. But in this case also the old initiate knew that a spiritual reality was behind the physical fact. He knew that when there is an eclipse of the moon, thoughts stream through darkness down upon the earth; and that such thoughts have a closer relationship with the subconscious life than with the conscious life of the human being. The old initiates often made use of a certain simile when speaking to their pupils. It is; of course, necessary to translate their words into modern language, but this is the gist of what they said: ‘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’.

Eclipses of the sun and moon, recurring as they do in the course of every year, may really be looked upon as “safety-valves.” A safety-valve is there to avert danger, to provide an outlet for something or other — steam, for instance — at the right moment. 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 do not, as a rule, act in full consciousness, but the facts are nevertheless real — 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, Human Q’s & Cosmic A.

Today on this eclipse of the Full Harvest Moon, I am thinking about how Rudolf Steiner gave us hints to come to terms with ‘Evil’. He reveals that the gods themselves called their opponents into being. Humanity, striving toward Freedom, stands as the Tenth Hierarchy & has as its task to integrate the vast gifts of Nature & Spirit while accepting the possibility & finding the strength to lead evil back to the good.

On the Italian side of my family we had a tradition during an eclipse of the Moon: In Italy the Moon was represented by a mirror, so during an eclipse, my grandmother would breathe on her old hand-mirror made of silver. She told us that a she-wolf, chased away from the flocks by the farmers, was so hungry that she swallowed the Moon during an eclipse, & that by breathing on the mirror we could cause the wolf to cough the moon back up & return it to the sky.

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. Banging on pots & pans did the trick.

These cultural examples, of which there are many, may seem ‘superstitious’ thru modern eyes, but they were a call to humanity to take action, to be present, to take part.

We are still called to put our will force into action, only now we must meet the darkness with an awakened consciousness. We must stand as Michaelic warriors, holding the shield of the sun in our hearts, reflecting the Christ light into the night.

Today at noon & at 8 pm I will do 3 Hallelujah’s.

Will you stand with me?

See you in the shadow

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Daisy Hu

Today’s Heart-Math Lesson

September 15, 2016Insight, Poetry, Quote, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul~hag

15 September 2016 – Astro-Weather:

A winter preview: Step out before the first light of dawn this week, & the sky displays the same starry panorama as it will at dusk next February. Orion stands high in the south, Sirius & Canis Major sparkle to its lower left, & Gemini occupies the high east

Uranus reaches opposition one month from today, but it already has become a tempting sight, rising before 9pm CDT & climbing up to the eastern horizon by 11 pm

***

Peter Murphy

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

The feast of Our Lady of Sorrows (Latin: Mater Dolorosa) The Seven Sorrows (or Dolors) are events in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

The Prophecy of Simeon. (Luke2:34–35)
The escape and Flight into Egypt. (Matthew2:13)
The Loss of the Child Jesusin the Temple of Jerusalem. (Luke 2:43–45)
The Meeting of Mary and Jesus on the Via Dolorosa.
The Crucifixion of Jesuson Mount Calvary. (John 19:25)
The Piercing of the Side of Jesus, and His Descent from the Cross. (Matthew 27:57–59)
The Burial of Jesusby Joseph of Arimathea. (John 19:40–42)

668 – Eastern Roman Emperor Constans II is assassinated in his bath at Syracuse, Italy.

921 – At Tetin, Saint Ludmila, a Czech saint, the grandmother of Saint Wenceslaus, widely referred to as Good King Wenceslaus, is murdered at the command of her daughter-in-law, Drahomíra, who was jealous of Ludmila’s influence over Wenceslaus. Antonín Dvořák composed his oratorio Svatá Ludmila for her

1254 – Birthday of Marco Polo, Italian merchant & explorer

1616 – The first non-aristocratic, free public school in Europe is opened in Frascati, Italy

1821 – Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, &Costa Rica jointly declare independence from Spain

1916 –Tanks are used for the first time in battle, at the Battle of the Somme World War I

1935 – The Nuremberg Laws deprive German Jews of citizenship

1935 – Nazi Germany adopts a new national flag bearing the swastika

1944 – Franklin D. Roosevelt & Winston Churchill meet in Quebec as part of the World War II Octagon Conference to discuss strategy.

1945 – A hurricane strikes southern Florida & the Bahamas, destroying 366 airplanes & 25 blimps at Naval Air Station Richmond, 230 die

1947 – Typhoon Kathleen hit the Kanto Region in Japan killing 1,077

1961 – Hurricane Carla strikes Texas with winds of 175 miles per hour, kills 23

1963 – 16th Street Baptist Church bombing , an act of white supremacist terrorism, in Birmingham, Alabama, occurred when four members of the Ku Klux Klan planted at least 15 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the front steps of the church.Described by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as “one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity”. The explosion killed four girls & injured 22 others.

No prosecutions ensued of the Klan members involved until 1977, when Robert Chambliss was tried & convicted of the first degree murder of one of the victims, 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair. Thomas Blanton & Bobby Cherry were each convicted of four counts of murder & sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 & 2002, but Herman Cash, was never charged .

The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing marked a turning point in the United States during the Civil Rights Movement & contributed to support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

1966 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation

1968 – The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship is launched, becoming the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere

1971 – The first Greenpeace ship sets sail to protest against nuclear testing on Amchitka Island

1972 – A Scandinavian Airlines System domestic flight is hijacked

1974 – Air Vietnam Flight 706 is hijacked, then crashes while attempting to land with 75 on board

2008 – Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history

Free Money Day is an annual, global event held since 2011 as a social experiment to promote sharing & alternative economic ideas. The day is held annually on September 15, the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers’ 2008 filing for bankruptcy. Participants offer their own money to passing strangers at public places, two coins or notes at a time. Recipients are asked to pass on one of the notes or coins to someone else

International Day of Democracy …’democracy is a universal value based on the freely-expressed will of people to determine their own political, economic, social and cultural systems, and their full participation in all aspects of life’

Lectures by Rudolf Steiner on this date

***

Mark Ryden

My POD (Poem Of the Day)

~In today’s Heart-Math lesson,

I bring the Tree of knowledge

Together with the Tree of Life…

This is the Mystery of Redemption…

~hag

***

From the Contents of Esoteric Classes, Stuttgart, given by Rudolf Steiner on this day in 1917

It’s very important for moderns to get a strong dose of esoteric life. Plagues, epidemics and wars would rage among men in a terrible way if the wise masters hadn’t decided to give mankind a deepening in the spiritual realm….

Our egotistical age can’t make proper use of such high capacities…Even people who have reached a certain stage in esoteric training can’t stand certain truths. And yet these are the very highest truths, and your training will eventually enable to you to receive them….

You all know that the heart is just at the beginning of its development and that it will later be a very important organ. One doesn’t have to accept this on faith for simple observation and reflection lets one see this. It’s the greatest riddle for modern scientists that the involuntary heart muscle is transversely striped just like the voluntary muscles this tells us that the heart will be a voluntary muscle in the future.

We speak of reincarnation and the law of karma. One can tell oneself: I don’t believe in reincarnation, but I can assume that it exists. I’ll act as if my assumption is true and wait to see what comes of it. A man who thinks and acts like this will make amazing discoveries. In everything that happens to him he’ll think: I caused this in a past life and now bear the consequences of my own deeds. If such a man unconsciously did something foolish and he’s punished for it, he’ll think: I’ll make myself aware of this foolishness, so that I can see that I was the one who brought on these ugly consequences. This is the real meaning of: Whoever hits you on the right cheek, turn the other one to him also.

Anyone who succeeds in looking for the cause of everything that hits him in himself has accomplished a great deal. One who does this will soon notice that it brings him forward, that he begins to loosen karmic chains and increasingly gets control of his life. Such a man treads his life’s path freely and surely. One can verify all anthroposophical teachings in the same way. So let’s all try to bring ever more spirituality into life and make the light and life that the great masters stream into us alive. You should all realize that the battles anthroposphy and especially esotericism will have to fight with the outer world will get ever bigger. There it’s a matter of standing fast, my sisters and brothers, stand fast, as you look at your goal and at the great masters who stand by us.

Together with you

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Clouds & Caterpillars

September 14, 2016Autumn, Insight, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars~hag

14 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: How soon after sunset can you see the Summer Triangle? Face east. Vega, the Triangle’s brightest star, is practically at the zenith. Deneb is the first bright star you encounter to Vega’s east-northeast. Altair shines less high in the southeast.

***

We are the echo of the future ~W. S. Merwin (Thanks to Chris Manvell)

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Feast of the Cross – According legend the True Cross was discovered in 326 by Saint Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, during a pilgrimage she made to Jerusalem. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was then built at the site of the discovery, by order of Helena & Constantine. The church was dedicated nine years later, on this same date, with a portion of the cross placed inside it.

Other legends explain that in 614, that portion of the cross was carried away from the church by the Persians, & remained missing until it was recaptured by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius in 628. Initially taken to Constantinople, the cross was returned to the church in 629.

1321 – Deathday of Durante degli Alighieri – known as Dante

1486 – Birthday of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, German Occultist, theologian, astrologer, & alchemist

1723 – Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena lays down the first stone of Fort Manoel in Malta. de Vilhena, a Portuguese nobleman was the 66th Prince of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Unlike many other Grand Masters, he was benevolent & popular with the Maltese people

1741 – George Frideric Handel completes his oratorio Messiah

1752 – The British Empire adopts the Gregorian calendar, skipping eleven days (the previous day was September 2)

1901 – U.S. President William McKinley dies after an assassination attempt on September 6, & is succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt

1940 – Ip massacre: The Hungarian Army, supported by local Hungarians, kill 158 Romanian civilians in Ip, Sălaj, a village in Northern Transylvania, an act of ethnic cleansing

1943 – World War II: The Wehrmacht starts targeting several Greek villages death toll over 500 people

1959 – The Soviet probe Luna 2 crashes onto the Moon, becoming the first man-made object to reach it?

1960 – The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is founded

1960 – Congo Crisis: With CIA help, Mobutu Sese Seko seizes power in a military coup, suspending parliament & the constitution

1969 – The US Selective Service selects September 14 as the First Draft Lottery date

2008 – All 88 people on board Aeroflot Flight 821 are killed when the plane crashes on approach to Perm Airport

Lectures by Rudolf Steiner on this date

***

Bernhoft

My POD (Poem Of the Day)

~I burn & radiate

In the empty space

Where fire appears blue

A jolt of essence

A glow of ether

A passion for stars & stones

~hag

***

Cloud Gazing

A very interesting meditation cloud gazing; part Rorschach, part cosmic divination. Recently I have felt called to watch the sky every day. Even for 5 minutes much can be revealed. I remain watchful & act as witness to the messages – in the formations, in the wind, in my body, in all of nature.

How is dawn speaking today? What will dusk want? Noon brings its own power. The robin’s song this year seems particularly urgent, yet lonesome. The milk weed is running with bright orange beetles. The cardinal couple talk & sway on the long stalks of the Joe Pie weed eating seeds. The golden rod are bursting with buzzing mason bees. O look the Michaelmas daisy’s are huge this year. And my goodness the way the spider web catches the light…I send out gratitude & love, & listen for the echo of the elementals.

Moving through the clouds, is that a choir of Angels, see it there…? They seem so active & willing to connect with those who are keen to look up & read the starry script, to intuit the augury without falling into illusion, to witness without judgment, to get out of the way, & yet to participate fully.

Was it Ben Franklin who was an initiate in weather watching?

The etheric realm is an open secret for those who have eyes to see. Look up & join in the co-creation of our evolution.

See you there

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

“Open thou my mouth, that I may sing forth thy praises”

September 13, 2016Insight, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

13 September 2016 – Astro-Weather: As dusk turns to night, Arcturus twinkles due west. It’s getting lower every week. And off to its right in the northwest, the Big Dipper is turning more & more level.

The constellations Ursa Major the Great Bear & Cassiopeia the Queen lie on opposite sides of the North Celestial Pole, so they pivot around the North Star (Polaris) throughout the course of the night & the year. In the first half of September, these two constellations appear equally high as darkness falls. You can find Ursa Major & its prominent asterism, the Big Dipper, above the northwestern horizon. Cassiopeia’s familiar W-shape, which currently lies on its side, appears the same height above the northeastern horizon. As the night progresses, Cassiopeia climbs above Polaris while the Big Dipper swings below it.

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Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. ~ Carl Jung

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Birthday of Hector, who Rudolf Steiner said was a living individual, later to be incarnated as Hamlet (See GA139 / 15.9.12)

Consider one of his characters, Hector. If you have any time available, you ought to study the figure of Hector in the Iliad — how plastically he is described so that he stands as a complete personality before us; how we see his affection for his paternal city, Troy, his wife Andromache, his relationship to Achilles, and to his armies; and how he commanded them. Try to call up this man before your minds, this man who possessed all the tenderness of a husband, and who clung in the ancient way to his home city of Troy, and who suffered such disillusions as only really great men can. Remember his relation with Achilles. Hector, as presented by Homer, is a towering figure from very ancient times, a man of great all-embracing humanity, for of course what Homer is describing belongs to a period well before his own, in the darkness of the past. Hector stands out above all the others, all those figures who seem mythical enough in the eyes of modern men.

Now take this one figure. Skeptics and all kinds of philologists may indeed doubt that there ever was a Hector at all, in the same way as they doubt the existence of Homer. But anyone who takes into consideration what may be understood from a purely human viewpoint will be convinced that Homer describes only facts that actually occurred. Hector was a living person who strode through Troy, and Achilles and the other figures were equally real. They still stand before us as personages of real earthly life. We look back to them as people of a different kind from ourselves, who are difficult to understand but whom the poet is able to bring before our souls in every detail. Now let us place before our souls a figure such as Hector, one of the chief Trojan commanders, who is defeated by Achilles. In such a personage we have something that belongs to the old pre-Christian age, something by which we can measure what men were before the time when Christ lived on earth..

I cannot go into everything underlying the historical prototype of the poetical figure of Hamlet, but through the research of spiritual science, I can offer you a striking example of how a man, a spirit of ancient times, reappears in the post-Christian era. The real figure underlying Hamlet, as presented by Shakespeare, is Hector. The same soul that lived in Hamlet lived in Hector. It is just by such a characteristic example as this, and the striking way the two different souls manifest themselves, that we can interpret what happened in the intervening time. A personality such as that of Hector stands before us in the pre-Christian age. Then comes the intervention of the Mystery of Golgotha in human evolution, and the spark it kindled in Hector’s soul causes a figure, a prototype of Hamlet, to arise, of whom Goethe said, “This is a soul that is unable to deal with any situation and is not equal to its position, who is assigned tasks but is unable to fulfill them.” ~Rudolf Steiner

Feast of St. John Chrysostom*

509 BC – The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on Rome’s Capitoline Hill is dedicated on the ides of September

81 – Deathday of Titus, Roman emperor

1501 – Michelangelo begins work on his statue of David

1541 – After three years of exile, John Calvin returns to Geneva to reform the church under a body of doctrine known as Calvinism

1584 – San Lorenzo del Escorial Palace in Madrid is finished

1592 – Deathday of Michel de Montaigne, French philosopher & author

1788 – The Philadelphia Convention sets the date for the first presidential election in the United States, & New York City becomes the country’s temporary capital

1814 – In a turning point in the War of 1812, the British fail to capture Baltimore. During the battle, Francis Scott Key composes his poem “Defence of Fort McHenry”, which is later set to music & becomes the United States’ national anthem

1874 – Birthday of Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian composer &painter

1872 – Deathday of Ludwig Feuerbach, German anthropologist & philosopher

1898 – Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film

1899 – Henry Bliss is the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident

1948 – Margaret Chase Smith is elected United States senator, & becomes the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives & the United States Senate

1953 – Nikita Khrushchev is appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1993 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shakes hands with Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat at the White House after signing the Oslo Accords granting limited Palestinian autonomy

2001 – Civilian aircraft traffic resumes in the United States after the September 11 attacks

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The bee is more honored than other animals, not because she labors, but because she labors for others. ~Saint John Chrysostom

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*Blessings on this Feast of St. John Chrysostom

(The name JOHN is an initiatory title, used not in the personal sense, but as a way to designate the True Human Being, & CHRYSOSTOM = Golden-Throat or Honeyed lips)

John Chrysostom’s preaching, by word & example, epitomizes the role of the prophet to comfort the afflicted & to afflict the comfortable. For his honesty & courage he paid the price of a turbulent ministry as bishop, personal vilification & exile.

There is much intrigue surrounding this great preacher from Antioch. Brought to Constantinople after a dozen years of priestly service in Syria, John found himself the reluctant victim of an imperial ruse to make him bishop in the greatest city of the empire. Ascetic, unimposing, dignified, yet troubled by stomach ailments from his desert days as a monk, John became a bishop under the cloud of imperial politics.

If his body was weak, his tongue was powerful. The content of his sermons, his exegesis of Scripture, were never without an exquisite exclamation point. Sometimes the point stung the high & mighty. Some sermons lasted up to two hours.

His lifestyle at the imperial court was not appreciated by many courtiers. He offered a modest table to episcopal sycophants hanging around for imperial & ecclesiastical favors. John deplored the court protocol that accorded him precedence before the highest state officials. He would not be a kept man. His zeal led him to decisive action. Bishops who bribed their way into office were deposed.

Many of his sermons called for concrete steps to share wealth with the poor.

The rich did not appreciate hearing from John that private property existed because of Adam’s fall from grace any more than married men liked to hear that they were bound to marital fidelity just as much as their wives were. When it came to justice & charity, John acknowledged no double standards.

Aloof, energetic, outspoken, especially when he became excited in the pulpit, John was a sure target for criticism & personal trouble. He was accused of gorging himself secretly on rich wines & fine foods, & yet he was as skinny as a stick. Also his faithfulness as spiritual director to the rich widow, Olympia, provoked much gossip attempting to prove him a hypocrite where wealth & chastity were concerned. His actions taken against unworthy bishops in Asia Minor were viewed by other ecclesiastics as a greedy, uncanonical extension of his authority.

Theophilus, archbishop of Alexandria, & Empress Eudoxia were determined to discredit John. Theophilus feared the growth in importance of the Bishop of Constantinople & took occasion to charge John with fostering heresy. Theophilus & other angered bishops were supported by Eudoxia. The empress resented his sermons contrasting gospel values with the excesses of imperial court life. Whether intended or not, sermons mentioning the lurid Jezebel (1 Kings 9:1—21:23) & impious Herodias (Mark 6:17-29) were associated with the empress, who finally did manage to have John exiled. He died in exile in 407.

“Open thou my mouth, that I may sing forth thy praises”

~with Blessings & Peace

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

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“Open thou my mouth, that I may sing forth thy praises”

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