Mysteries of the Will

June 16, 2016Insight, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Summer~hag

16 June 2016 – shadow transit of Io, one of Jupiter’s moons begins at twilight, ends at 12:50am (17th)

1361 – Deathday of Johannes Tauler, a disciple of Meister Eckhart, one of the most important Rhineland Mystics. He promoted a neo-platonist dimension in the Dominican spirituality of his time

1858 – Abraham Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois

1901 – Deathday of Herman Grimm, son of one of the “Brothers Grimm” compilers of indigenous folk tales. His reputation is that of the arch-Romantic, Gründerzeit art historian, he was viewed as the intellectual successor of Goethe. His approach to art history was through the “Great Masters,” & a biographical account of art history. Rudolf Steiner spoke about his past lives as Pliny the Younger & Beatrice of Tuscany.

1903 – The Ford Motor Company is incorporated

1904 – Irish author James Joyce begins a relationship with Nora Barnacle & subsequently uses the date to set the actions for his novel Ulysses; this date is now traditionally called “Bloomsday”

1911 – IBM founded in Endicott, New York

1920 – Dr. Rudolf Steiner, & Dr. Ita Wegman, founded “Futurum AG“, in Arlesheim, Switzerland, & “Der Kommende Tag AG (an incorporated company to encourage economic & spiritual values) in Stuttgart Germany. Both companies merged for economic reasons, & today is known as Weleda.

1932 – D.N. Dunlop plans “International Association for the Advancement of Spiritual Science”

1936 – Deathday of Emil Molt, used concepts of the 3-fold social order in his business. Thru the guidance of Rudolf Steiner he became the founder of the first Waldorf School. Steiner spoke of him as the individuality called Charlemagne.

1961 – Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union

1963 –Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space

1967 – The Monterey Pop Festival begins

1976 – Soweto uprising: A non-violent march by 15,000 students in Soweto, South Africa turns into days of rioting when police open fire on the crowd

2008 – California began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples

~ ~ ~

~My mouth & hands are green

Seedlings

Callused moments in time

Fluttering in the dirt

I play the earth

Like a flirting worm

~hag

~ ~ ~

Part 6 in: A Summary of THE ST. JOHN IMAGINATION, from ~the Four Seasons and the Archangels, Lecture 4, by Rudolf Steiner

In the new mysteries, we strive at St. John’s Tide,

Toward an enhanced awareness of our will forces –

An effort to ‘make straight the path’,

To recognize our potential for discordant, As well as selfless acts;

An effort to enable the Higher Ego to come to expression

Ever more fully in the mysterious recesses of our personal priorities

With respect to our will.

~ ~ ~

Tomorrow: Union with the Sun

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Current Festival & Program Events

Behold our Weaving

June 15, 2016Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Summer~hag

15 June 2016 –

Look for Mars & Saturn near Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. They make a noticeable triangle on the sky’s dome. Let the moon help guide your eye to Mars & the bright star Spica for the next several evenings. Then watch for the moon to swing away from Spica & more closely with Mars on June 16 & June 17. Then by June 18, the moon will move away from Mars to pair up with Saturn.

303 – St. Vitus Day. In the late Middle Ages, people in Germany & countries such as Latvia celebrated the feast of Vitus by dancing before his statue. This dancing became popular & the name “Saint Vitus Dance” was given to the neurological disorder Sydenham’s chorea. It also led to Vitus being considered the patron saint of dancers, actors, comedians, & epileptics. He is also said to protect against lightning strikes, animal attacks & oversleeping

763 BC – Assyrians record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history

991 – Deathday of Theophanu, Byzantine Empress of the Holy Roman Empire

1215 –Magna Carta sealed by King John of England & barons. First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury to make peace between the unpopular King & a group of rebel barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, & limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons.

1648 – Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft

1667 – The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys

1752 – Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity

1775 –George Washington is appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army

1816 – At the Villa Diodati in the village of Cologny, Switzerland, Lord Byron reads Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests — Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, & John Polidori — & challenges each guest to write a ghost story, which culminates in Mary Shelley writing the novel Frankenstein, John Polidori The Vampyre, & Byron the poem Darkness.

1896 – The deadliest tsunami in Japan’s history kills more than 22,000 people

1904 – A fire aboard the steamboat SS General Slocum in New York City’s East River kills 1,000

1985 – Rembrandt’s painting Danaë is attacked by Bronius Maigys, a Soviet national, later judged insane, who throws sulfuric acid on the canvas & cuts it twice with a knife

1991 – In the Philippines, Mount Pinatubo erupts in the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th Century. In the end, over 800 people die

~ ~ ~

~Watch-Out

Death always comes in 3’s

Yet Life is…a singular breath

Time is…a passive eye

O justice

When will truth be law?

~hag

~ ~ ~

Part 5 in: A Summary of THE ST. JOHN IMAGINATION, from ~the Four Seasons and the Archangels, Lecture 4, by Rudolf Steiner

“…The Heights become Mysteries, the Depths become Mysteries, and man himself becomes a Mystery within the Mysteries of the Cosmos. Right into his bony system he feels the crystal-forming power. But he feels also how this same power is in cosmic union with the living power of light in the heavens above. He feels how all that comes about through mankind as morality in these Mysteries of the Heights lives and weaves in these Mysteries of the Depths, and in the conjunction between the two. He feels himself no longer sundered from the world around him, but placed within it, united above with the shining Intelligence, in which he experiences, as in the womb of worlds, his own best thoughts.

All this, too, would have to sound forth in musical tones — tones which carry these motifs on their wings and make them part of human experience. For these motifs are there. They do not have to be sought out; they can be read from the cosmic activity of Uriel. Here it is that Imagination passes over into Inspiration.

Man, however, lives in a certain sense as an embodied Inspiration, as a being brought into existence by Inspiration, in the Mysteries of the heights and depths and in the Mysteries of their conjunction. He lives in the Mysteries to which the Spirit-Father points upward; the Mysteries to which the Spirit-Mother points downwards, the Mysteries which are united by the fact that the Christ, though the working together of the Spirit-Father and the Spirit-Mother, stands directly before the human soul as the sustaining Cosmic Spirit.

That which is woven out of all these cosmic secrets I may put before you somewhat in the following way. It is as though the human being, placed in the midst of all that goes on in high summer, were to feel something like this. The first words endeavour to represent how the gaze of Uriel concentrates itself into Inspiration, united with the Spirit-tones of the whole choir:

Schaue unser Weben Das leuchtende Erregen Das warmende Leben	}	The Heights
Lebe irdisch Erhaltendes Und atmend Gestaltetes — Als wesenhaft Waltendes	}	The Depths
Fühle dein Menschengebeine Mit himmlischen Scheine Im waltenden Weltenvereine	}	The Midst The inner being of Man.

Here in these nine lines are the Mysteries of the Heights, the Mysteries of the Depths, and the Mysteries of the Midst, which are also those of the inner being of man. And then we have the whole gathered up as a cosmic statement of these Mysteries of the Heights, the Depths and the Midst, sounding out as though with organ and trumpet tones:

Es werden Stoffe verdichtet
Es werden Fehler gerichtet
Es werden Herzen gesichtet.

Here you have that which can permeate the human being at midsummer, supporting him, exalting him, confirming him — the St. John Imagination filled with Inspiration, the St. John Inspiration filled with Imagination — in these words:

Schaue unser Weben Das leuchtende Erregen Das warmende Leben	}	The Heights
Lebe irdisch Erhaltendes Und atmend Gestaltetes — Als wesenhaft Waltendes	}	The Depths
Fühle dein Menschengebeine Mit himmlischen Scheine Im waltenden Weltenvereine	}	The Midst The inner being of Man.
Es werden Stoffe verdichtet Es werden Fehler gerichtet Es werden Herzen gesichtet.

Behold our weaving, the kindling radiance, the warming life.
Live in the earth’s sustaining, and in the form-giving breathing,
with the power of true being.

Feel your very bones suffused with heavenly glory
in the presiding yoga of the worlds.

Substances are densified, errors are judged and rectified,
Hearts are sifted – Receive the light

~Rudolf SteinerTomorrow: A look into the Will

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

~ ~ ~

Moonday June 20, 2016 – It’s Summer Solstice & The Full Honey-Moon!!!

So come join our : St. John’s Tide Bon-Fire

7pm – 9pm

Pot-Luck Dinner & Social Gathering in the backyard of Hazel & Chuck Ginsberg

Please Bring Food & Drink to Share in Community

RSVP ReverseRitual@gmail.com by June 17 for address & directions

PS. there’s a Cub Game that night so be sure to come in for a sticker to put in your car.

Will we endeavor to sing the secrets of our cosmic life?

June 14, 2016Insight, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

14 June, 2016 –

John Stolfo

Sunset 8:27pm CDT, yet the late twilight fades after 9:15pm this evening, & the waxing Gibbous Moon nearly overwhelms the bluish-white star Spica, about one third of the way up in the south-southwest. Although Spica will struggle to be seen with the brilliance of the moon, Spica is a powerhouse of a star. It is nearly 8 times larger than our Sun, & a blinding 12,000 times brighter.

‘Flag Day’ 1777 – The Stars & Stripes is adopted by Congress as the Flag of the United States

1789 – Mutiny on the Bounty survivors including Captain William Bligh & 18 others reach Timor after a nearly 4,600 mile journey in an open boat

1789 – Whiskey distilled from maize is first produced by Rev Elijah Craig. It is named Bourbon because he lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky

1900 – Hawaii becomes a United States territory

1907 – Norway grants women the right to vote

1919 – The first non-stop trans-Atlantic flight began. Captain John Alcot & Lt. Arthur Brown flew from Newfoundland to Ireland

1951 – “Univac I” was unveiled. It was a computer designed for the U.S. Census Bureau & billed as the world’s first commercial computer

1954 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a bill into law that places the words “under God” into the United States Pledge of Allegiance

1967 – The People’s Republic of China tests its first hydrogen bomb

1986 – Deathday of Jorge Luis Borges, Argentinian author and poet

2002 – Near-Earth asteroid 2002 MN misses the Earth by 75,000

~ ~ ~

~The eye opens differentiating

Colors in the light

Recalling me in this now

Knowing my name

It watches my heart

Wags my tongue

& Hangs the sky with Moon & Star

It is

Yesterday & tomorrow

A million years traveling

To reach the flowers in my hand

~hag

~ ~ ~

Part 4 in: A Summary of THE ST. JOHN IMAGINATION, from ~the Four Seasons and the Archangels, Lecture 4, by Rudolf Steiner

Like the call of conscience from John the Baptist, the need arises to let the light of the Higher Ego shine into our being, knowing that the union of creator & created is affected by any disharmony from our imperfect deeds; & also enhanced by our acts of Good Will.

Rudolf Steiner tells us that in spiritual observation there can appear, as a kind of culmination, this picture of Uriel’s eyes, mixed with the image of a white Dove. (See above) Then we feel how “the silver-sparkling blue below, which arises from the depths of the Earth, bound up with human weaknesses & error, is gathered into a picture of the Earth-Mother (blue). Whether she is called Demeter or Mary, the picture is of the Earth-Mother”.

So it is that we can bring together in Imagination “all those secrets of the depths which go to make up the material Mother of all existence; while in all that is concentrated in the flowing form above we feel & experience the Spirit-Father of everything around us”.

How can we “behold the outcome of the working together of Spirit-Father with Earth-Mother, bearing so beautifully within itself the harmony of the earthly silver, with the gold of the heights”? Between the Father & the Mother we behold the Son. This is an image of the Trinity, a true St. John Imagination.

At midsummer the Trinity reveals itself out of the heart of cosmic activity.

Steiner suggests that all that is living in these weaving pictures can only truly be expressed by the human being thru the power of music.

Like a vaulted background to this living picture reverberating as sound in the ethers, we feel the creative, admonishing gaze of Uriel, prompting the human being to sing & create music with the stars. Then the cosmic Mystery of St. John can speak directly to our head, hands & hearts.

“The silver-shining that rays up from below, and is revealed in the form-giving beauty of the light above, must be expressed at St. John’s-tide through appropriate musical instruments”.

What would it be like to explore through these musical harmonies, our own inner harmony with the cosmos? Will we endeavor to sing the secrets of our cosmic life? Can we give voice, to the improvisation living in this moment that unites us to the eternity of the Trinity?

“For in them the secret of man’s living together with the cosmos at St. John’s tide would have to sound forth. All this would have to be given voice in the music, so that in looking up to the heights we would be looking at the weaving gold of the cosmos, and would see the glowing form of Uriel emerging from the light-filled gold and directing his gaze and his gesture down to the Earth…All this would have to be not in any fixed form, but in living movement. That would be one motif, a heavenly motif through which humanity can feel united, with the shining Cosmic Intelligence”.

Tomorrow: The Weaving

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Current Festival & Program Events

Can you hear the Voice of Conscience?

June 13, 2016Insight, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Summer~hag

13 June 2016 – The next few days brings the earliest sunrises of the year. Although the Northern Hemisphere’s longest day doesn’t occur until Earth’s Summer Solstice (on June 20 this year), Earliest Sunrise happens before, & Latest Sunset several days after.

Domingos Sequeira

175 BC – Tobias accompanied by the Archangel Raphael

313 – The Edict of Milan, signed by Constantine the Great and co-emperor Valerius Licinius granting religious freedom throughout the Roman Empire

1231 – Feast Day of Anthony of Padua, Portuguese priest & saint

1381 – The Peasants’ Revolt, also called Wat Tyler’s Rebellion or the Great Rising. The revolt had various causes, including the socio-economic & political tensions generated by the Black Death in the 1340s, the high taxes resulting from the conflict with France during the Hundred Years’ War, & instability within the local leadership of London. Inspired by the sermons of the radical cleric John Ball, & led by Wat Tyler, a wide spectrum of rural society, including many local artisans & village officials, rose up in protest, burning court records & opening the local gaols. The rebels sought a reduction in taxation, an end to the system of unfree labor known as serfdom.

King Richard II, then aged 14, retreated to the safety of the Tower of London. On 13 June, the rebels destroyed the Savoy Palace. The following day, Richard met the rebels & acceded to most of their demands, including the abolition of serfdom.

1525 – Martin Luther marries Katharina von Bora, against the celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for priests and nuns

1774 – Rhode Island becomes the first colony to ban the importation of slaves

1864 – Birthday of Rudolf Kjellén a Swedish political scientist & politician who first coined the term “geopolitics”, Rudolf Steiner spoke about him in Karma of Untruthfulness GA 173/174

1865 – Birthday of W. B. Yeats, Irish poet & playwright, Nobel Prize laureate

1886 – Deathday of Ludwig II of Bavaria, patron of Wagner

1886 – A fire devastates much of Vancouver, British Columbia

1966 – The United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them

1971 – Vietnam War: The New York Times begins publication of the Pentagon Papers

~ ~ ~

~I am cloaked in light

Loved & touched & bound by light, To enter Light…

My heart bares scars to prove I’ve lived

I’ve learned

The story of my existence as I live it

As it is spoken from the mouths of gods…

I lift my face to eternity

And am blessed by the kiss of Day…

~ ~ ~

Part 3 in: A Summary of THE ST. JOHN IMAGINATION, from ~the Four Seasons and the Archangels, Lecture 4, by Rudolf Steiner

Can you hear the voice of conscience?

At the fullness of Summer, the light is so bright that it leaves no room for the shadow to hide. High Noon is the hour of judgment – a good time to remember what John said “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

What is this deep longing we can have as human beings, to understand the purposeful Summer gaze of the powerful Archangel Uriel? Looking downward we have the impression we can learn to look with spiritual eyes into the blue, silver-gleaming depths of the Earth in summer. And Steiner tells us that weaving around these silver-gleaming crystalline rays are shapes — he calls them “disturbing shapes, which continually gather & dissolve”. We can come to an imagination that we may perceive these shapes as “human errors which stand out against the natural order of regular crystals here below”.

It is to this that Uriel directs his earnest gaze. Here during the height of summer the imperfections of humankind, in contrast to the regularity of the growing crystal forms, are measured. From Uriel we gain the impression of how human morality becomes interwoven with nature.

Here we see that the moral world-order is not abstract, we see that humanity has an effect in the world, for good or for ill. On the one hand, “all that is in human virtue & human excellence rises up with the silver-gleaming lines & is seen as the clouds that envelop Uriel (red). It enters into the radiant Intelligence, transmuted into cloud-shaped works of art”.

But it is impossible to look towards the increasingly earnest gaze of Uriel, directed towards the depths of the Earth, without also seeing there the human deeds that have missed the mark. To this the Archangel must direct us with: “wing-like arms, raised in earnest admonition, and this gesture by Uriel has the effect of imparting to humankind, what Steiner calls, ”the historic conscience”.

This is Uriel’s “warning gesture”, pointing out how shabby humanity’s moral compass has become. And this reality comes as a mighty, living picture into our conscience.

“And now if we have gained the impression of the connection of human morality with the crystalline element below and of human virtues with the shining beauty above, and if we take these connections into our inward experience, the real St. John Imagination will come to meet us”.

Tomorrow we meet Demeter

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

“You clouds of summer, radiant with Intelligence…”

June 12, 2016Insight, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Summer~hag

12 June 2016, This evening The 1^st Quarter Moon forms a great, nearly straight line with Spica to her left, & Jupiter & Regulus to her lower right.

1240 – At the instigation of Louis IX of France, an inter-faith debate, known as the Disputation of Paris, starts between a Christian monk & four rabbis

1429 – Hundred Years’ War: Joan of Arc leads the French army in their capture of the city & the English commander, William de la Pole.

1519 – Birthday of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany

1665 – England installs a municipal government in New York City (the former Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam)

1915 – Today is the 101st Birthday of David Rockefeller an American banker who served as chairman of Chase Manhattan Corporation. He is the oldest living member of the Rockefeller family, the only surviving child of John D. Rockefeller.

1929 – Birthday of Anne Frank, 1942 –receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday

1943 – Holocaust: Germany liquidates the Jewish Ghetto in Brzeżany, Poland Around 1,180 Jews are led to the city’s old Jewish graveyard & shot

1964 – Anti-apartheid activist and ANC leader Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison for sabotage in South Africa

1967 – Loving Day is an annual celebration held on the anniversary of The US Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declaring that all U.S. state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.

1991 – Russians elect Boris Yeltsin as the president of the republic

1994 – Deathday of Nicole Brown Simpson the ex-wife of O. J. Simpson & the mother of two of his children. She was killed at her home in Brentwood, LA, along with restaurant waiter Ron Goldman. O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the murders but was later found liable for the deaths in a civil trial.

2006 – Deathday of György Ligeti, composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as “one of the most important avant-garde composers of the twentieth century” & “one of the most innovative & influential among progressive figures of his time”.

Born in Transylvania, Romania, he lived in Hungary before emigrating to Austria. He became professor of composition at the Hamburg Hochschule für Musik und Theater.

He is best known by the public for the use of his music in film soundtracks. Most famously in the films of Stanley Kubrick, particularly with the music from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

~ ~ ~

Van James

Calendar of the Soul – Twelfth Week [June 12, 2016 – June 18, 2016]

The radiant beauty of the world

Compels my inmost soul to free

God-given powers of my nature

That they may soar into the cosmos,

To take wing from myself

And trustingly to seek myself

In cosmic light and cosmic warmth.

~ ~ ~

Part 2 in: A Summary of THE ST. JOHN IMAGINATION, from ~the Four Seasons and the Archangels Lecture 4, by Rudolf Steiner

When we look up to the heavens at MidSummer, we gain the impression of expansive cosmic Intelligence. We get the feeling that cosmic Intelligence is alive everywhere , an impression of many beings that live together & within each other, woven through with light; the polar opposite of the Will.

Down below, deep within the Earth, we feel —that in the blue darkness everything is experienced as will forces. Yet up above we feel — everything we perceive is illumined, permeated, with a feeling of intelligence.

Within this radiant activity there appears the extremely earnest countenance of the Archangel Uriel, which arises glowing warmly out of the pervading radiant Intelligence (red head in the yellow, Plate V). We have the impression that this being forms its body of light, out of the radiant Intelligence. And for this to happen at the height of summer, the elemental spirits of the Earth must soar upwards. And as they do, they weave themselves into the shining Intelligence up above, & the shining Intelligence receives them into itself. And out of that gleaming radiance Uriel takes form.

It is with great earnestness that this representative of the weaving cosmic forces, seeking to embody himself in a vesture of light, appears in the time of summer. The intelligence of Uriel arises from the working together of the planetary forces, supported by the working of the fixed stars of the Zodiac. The deeds accomplished by Uriel in the radiant light, preserves the thoughts of the cosmos, in his thoughts.

The feeling comes: “You clouds of summer, radiant with Intelligence, in which are reflected up above the blue crystal-formations of the earth below, just as these blue crystal-formations mirror in turn the shining Intelligence of the summer clouds — out of your shining there appears in high summer, with earnest countenance, a concentrated Imagination of Cosmic Understanding…Through the power of attraction residing in the concentrated cosmic Intelligence of Uriel, the silver forces (white) are drawn upwards, and in the light of this inwardly shining Intelligence, as seen from the Earth, they appear as radiant sunlight, densifying into a glory of gold. One has the immediate feeling that the gleaming silver, streaming up from below, is received by the sunlit radiance above. And the earth-silver — the phrase is quite correct — is changed by cosmic alchemy into the cosmic gold which lives and weaves in the heights.”

With the sprouting, springing life, we can no longer speak of matter permeated by spirit, as it is in winter. We have to speak of spirit woven through with matter – with silver and gold.

Tomorrow we follow Uriel’s gaze into human morality & conscience.

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Current Festival & Program Events

Cognitive Ritual

~Confessions of a Modern Rosicrucian

Mysteries of the Will

Behold our Weaving

Will we endeavor to sing the secrets of our cosmic life?

Can you hear the Voice of Conscience?

“You clouds of summer, radiant with Intelligence…”

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