I follow the path to the Sun

Insight, Poetry, Remembering

May 27, 2016

mary Magdalen_with_the_Smoking_Flame_c1640_Georges_de_La_Tour

Birthday of Mary Magdalene  – According to T.H. Meyer & ‘The Present Age’

Domenico di Michelino Dante and His Poem (1465) fresco, in the dome of the church of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence (Florence's cathedral). Dante Alighieri is shown holding a copy of his epic poem The Divine Comedy. He is pointing to a procession of sinners being lead down to the circles of Hell on the left. Behind him are the seven terraces of Purgatory, with Adam and Eve representing Earthly Paradise on top. Above them, the sun and the moon represent Heavenly Paradise, whilst on the right is Dante's home city of Florence. The illustration of Florence is self referencial, depicting the recently completed and much celebrated cathedral dome inside which the fresco is painted.
Domenico di Michelino 

1265 – Birthday of Dante (thought to be reincarnated as King John of Saxony. Beyond his political work, John was busy with literature. Under the pseudonym Philalethes he translated to German Dante’s Divine Comedy)

Philalethes

1564 – Deathday of John Calvin an influential French theologian & pastor during the Protestant Reformation, called Calvinism, influenced by the Augustinian tradition. The aim of Calvin’s political theory was to safeguard the rights and freedoms of ordinary people.

1840 – Deathday of Paganini an Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, & composer – the most celebrated violin virtuoso of his time.

1907 – Bubonic plague breaks out in San Francisco

Rachel Carson

1907 – Birthday of Rachel Carson, American biologist, environmentalist, and author. Although she was not an anthroposophist per say, Rachel Carson had a strong association with Marjorie Spock,  attending her study groups over the years.

1933 – The Century of Progress World’s Fair opens in Chicago

1933 – New Deal: The U.S. Federal Securities Act is signed into law requiring the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission.

1941 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims an “unlimited national emergency”

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sunrise

~I follow the path to the Sun

Moment by moment, Season to season

But to travel East is to grieve in darkness.

I find my star radiating from the Earth Heart

Shining in the rainbow clouds

Working in my skin.

And so I reflect with the Moon, cycle by cycle

Toting fertile moisture in the mix

My skeleton filling with the resurrection

Knowing

I shall not fall to forgetfulness.

~hag

~   ~   ~

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In thinking about: “The Working of the Spirit” by Michael Burton & Marke Levene. Part TWO (program for the Chicago reading)

When I 1st started working with Rudolf Steiner’s 4 Mystery Dramas, it was as if ‘How to Know Higher Worlds’ had come alive for me. I saw in the various characters, living examples of the many tributaries on the path of initiation – Each soul reflecting a different temperament, embodying a specific stream. I’d ask myself, ‘Am I a “fox” or a “nobleman”, “upright”, “humble”, “loyal”, “god-fearing” or “enspirited”, “provincial”, “prudent”, or a “firebrand”, “truthful” or “bold”…

Of course I saw myself in them all. And I longed to be a “Bearer of the Spiritual Elements” like Benedictus, or the “Bearer of the Elements of Soul”, like Maria. I’d ask myself: How can I strive to live more fully in the will forces, like the scientist Strader or truly exemplify the beauty of consecration to devotion & sacrifice?

And yes, I had my sympathies & antipathies to certain personalities, a wonderful reflection of what I had to work on in myself. I remember wanting to shake Johannes into shape. Like in a movie where you know the character is in trouble, I wanted to scream out to him “Yo Johnny wake up that’s Lucifer talking.”

I had a particular antipathy to Capesius, so I was excited when I 1st heard that in “The Working of the Spirit” I was to play his Angel. I thought perhaps I would gain more insight into what I was pushing up against. Although I ended up with other characters to portray, I still took the time meditatively to look into that relationship. More on that later.

It made real sense to me that “The Working of the Spirit” was set “spiritually around the time of the death of Rudolf Steiner (1925)”. And I was very excited to see emphasis placed on the idea of social three-folding, which I am hoping can become a spark that gives birth to this eternal flame, healing many aspects of life that we meet today in the 21st century. It was interesting to see the main characters listed according to where they stand regarding the three spheres of society –

  1. the cultural & spiritual sphere
  2. the sphere of human rights
  3. the economic sphere

Another compelling component is that “most of the main characters also appear in earlier lives in Delphi in the Sixth Century BCE & in Athens a little before 400 BCE”. To see Theodora as the Delphic Oracle is right in line with Steiner’s insights into her enigmatic individuality.

Also it is important for our time to delve into the source behind the Platonic & Aristotelian streams so that we can bridge the gap between them.

There is so much more to say. We’ll see where tomorrow will take us.

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

To Gentle the Knot

Insight, Poetry, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote

May 26, 2016, National Paper Airplane Day

paper-airplanes_shutterstock_43792207-800x460

604 – Deathday of St. Augustine of Canterbury

1293 – An earthquake strikes Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan, killing about 30,000

1521 – Luther outlawed

1805 – Napoléon Bonaparte assumes the title of King of Italy and is crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in Milan Cathedral, the gothic cathedral in Milan.

Kaspar_hauser

1828 – Kasper Hauser appears in Nuremberg on Whit Monday “The Child Of Europe”

1830 – The Indian Removal Act is passed by the U.S. Congress; it is signed into law by President Andrew Jackson two days later.

1896 – Nicholas II becomes the last Tsar of Imperial Russia.

1976 – Deathday of German Philosopher Martin Heidegger

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face!!!

“In giving speech artistic shape and form the healthy co-operation and harmonization of body, soul and spirit becomes manifest. The body shows whether it is able to incorporate the Spirit correctly; the soul reveals whether the spirit lives in it truly; and the Spirit is vividly present working directly into the physical. Those taking part in speech courses have a direct personal experience of the revelation of Anthroposophy in the activity of Man. Here it may be regarded as a testing of Anthroposophy that it is in a position to enable the art of speech to come to life again, in its full significance.” ~Rudolf Steiner

In thinking about: “The Working of the Spirit” by Michael Burton & Marke Levene. Part 1 – (program for the Chicago reading)

A troupe of about twenty actors, came into Chicago on May 18th 2016, including folks like: Glen Williamson, Matthew Dexter & Kim Synder-Vine, with director  Henry-Cameron Allen from Gloucester, Massachusetts, & writer Michael Hedley Burton, from Australia, with producer Marke Levene & eurythmist Barbara Richardson… Everyone open to taking on whatever the play needed…Ensouling our branch with their graceful presence, striving thru 12 hour days in rehearsal, weaving together in an intentional karmic-knot for the Readers Theater production that auspiciously premiered on the day of the Full Buddha Moon, May 21st, 2016.

It brought back for me the grand experience of 2 years ago:

I wrote this 13 August 2014, Dear Sisters and Brothers-

I stood in a circle with a cast and crew of over 69 souls involved with the Mystery Dramas in Spring Valley, NY; in what felt like the center of the Temple of the New Mysteries. Throughout the tech week, on into the 10 day conference, I held a picture of the legend of Christian Rosenkreutz – how every hundred years his tomb is opened, signaling a sea-change in consciousness; knowing that it’s been over a hundred years since the seeds for the Mystery Dramas were sown by Rudolf Steiner with the help of Marie Steiner and their crew across the sea.

It was fitting that the 1st play “The Portal of Initiation – A Rosicrucian Drama” was performed on the eve of the Full Corn Moon, affirming that those seeds planted a century ago have now been reaped in bounty – brought into fullness through our collective harvest.

We can most certainly say that the Seals have now been opened on the Mystery Dramas here in North America!

I feel honored that my small thread was woven into this historic karmic knot, to help create the tapestry of these dramas, which reveal in artistic form, the core of anthroposophy, and especially Steiner’s teachings on karmic relationships.

May this poem, written on our ‘free day’, remind us that the drama of initiation is enacted by all of us every day on the stage of our lives.

‘I see your star’

Wisdom in Love

Hope in Truth

Truth in Christ

Faith

That sacrifice will answer

The call of pain

To gentle the knot

In patient thankfulness

 

‘Remain with me united’

To root

‘The Uprooted’

Resounding anew

The song of Cosmic Will

While choirs of Angels

Weave Love’s grace

To balance light with warmth

In us.

~hag

Tomorrow: a Drama of Initiation

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

mystery drama sealsbox

Speaking as If

Poetry, Remembering

May 25, 2016

Komet Halley 1910: Das Betreten der Milchstraße ist bei Strafe verboten!

240 BC – First recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet.

1085 – Death-day of Gregor VII – One of the great reforming popes, best known for the ‘Investiture Controversy’, attacking the practice of simony (trafficking for money in “spiritual things”- named after Simon Magus, who is described in Acts 8:9–24 as offering Peter & John, payment in exchange for their empowering him to impart the Holy Spirit to anyone he laid hands on) & his dispute with Henry IV. In Rudolf Steiner’s Karma Lectures Vol. I/12 he was revealed as Haeckel in a previous life.

Ralph_Waldo_Emerson_Quote

1803 – Birthday of Ralph Waldo Emerson an American essayist, lecturer, & poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism.

1803- Birthday of Edward Bulwer-Lytton an English novelist, poet, playwright, & politician. Theosophists Annie Besant & especially Helena Blavatsky incorporated his thoughts & ideas, from: ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’, ‘Vril’, ‘The Power of the Coming Race’ & my fav. ‘Zanoni’, in her own books.

He coined the phrases “the great unwashed”,”pursuit of the almighty dollar”, “the pen is mightier than the sword”, “dweller on the threshold”, as well as the well-known opening line “It was a dark and stormy night”.

1904 – Birthday of Wilhelm Jordan a German writer & politician, seen as “a precursor of Nietzsche and pioneer of Darwin in Germany”; Known for his books ‘Mysterium Demiurgos’ & his translation of the Edda.

~   ~   ~

birdSSB

~I imagine the Ancient Ones

Speaking as if

I were their dream –

Her mouth dry as bone

Old lips grown yellow & hard

A beak that crushes words like seed…

And after a long flight thru my imagination

She drops each sound

To fall in a field left fallow

Yet secretly full

Of verses for the future

~hag

 

Now & Then

Poetry, Remembering

May 24, 2016

1543 – Death-day of Nicholas Copernicus

1612 – Death-day of Sir Robert Cecil, Secretary of State for King James.

1844- 1st telegraph message by Samuel Morse “What hath God wrought?”

1954 – Birthday of Barbo Karlen thought to have been Anne Frank (see Perseus Verlag)

~   ~   ~

angel flying!David Howard Johnson

From a dream:

~My angel motioned toward a door

That opened from air into air.

With her eyes she asked

“Does your heart know the name of this gate?”

“Being” I said

“And the lands on either side?”

“Now & then”

“You may pass, she smiled,

See now the New Isis”

I stepped thru & nothing changed,

Yet I had entered heaven.

And in the distance a jackal howled at the stars.

~hag

On the High Tide of Blessings

Poetry, Remembering

May 23, 2016

Savonarola Girolamo (1)

1498 –Girolamo Savonarola is burned at the stake in Florence, Italy. Savonarola was an Italian Dominican friar. He was known for his prophecies & his calls for Christian renewal. He denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule & the exploitation of the poor. 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 & “richer, more powerful, more glorious than ever”, enlisting the active help of Florentine youth.

In 1495 when Florence refused to join Pope Alexander VI’s Holy League against the French, the Vatican summoned Savonarola to Rome. He disobeyed & defied the pope by preaching under a ban, highlighting his campaign for reform with processions, bonfires & pious theatricals. In retaliation, the Pope excommunicated him.

A trial by fire proposed by a rival Florentine preacher to test Savonarola’s divine mandate turned into a fiasco. On May 23, 1498, they condemned, hanged, & burned him in the main square of Florence.

1533 – The marriage of King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon is declared null and void.

1934 – The American bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed by police and killed in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.

1945 – World War II: Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Schutzstaffel, commits suicide while in Allied custody.

~   ~   ~

heartshadow

~To my body I gave the power of my heart

Bee love & create I said

Beat within the grace of the world’s rhythms

A pulsing radiant sun

In tune with the music of becoming

A ferry thru dark churning waves

An oasis flowing with fresh waters

On the high tide of blessings

To open my head

In pure thought unfolded

~hag

~   ~   ~

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Dear Friends –

It is my intention to share some impressions, explore key themes & insights into the initiatory revelations that I am currently living with from my recent immersion in the Leminscate Arts Mystery Drama “The Working of the Spirit”. I may need a few days to chew over & digest, to catch my breath & come back into my meditative rhythm.  So until soon…

Xox

~hag = Hazel Archer Ginsberg