March is abundant with ‘Holy Days’, finding voice through many cultural expressions.
March 4th is the Deathday of Dr. Ita Wegman close collaborator in many lifetimes with Rudolf Steiner
On the 6th – Purim begins at sunset. The Festival commemorates when the Jewish people living in Persia were saved by Esther. It is customary to hold carnival-like celebrations on Purim – a kind of Jewish Mardi Gras.
The 7th is the Full Moon, called The Sap Moon, The Worm Moon, The Crow Moon, or The Lenten Moon.
On the 12th we ‘Spring Forward’ for the dubious ‘Daylight Saving Time’.
Our Chicago Church
Sunday the 12th is also the start of Passion-Tide in the Christian Community.
14 March is Marie Steiner von Sivers Birthday
Vincenzo Camuccini
The 15th is the famous Ides of March; which we all know is the day Julius Caesar was warned by the soothsayers to beware; the day he was assassinated. But did you know that according to the ancient Roman calendar, the Ides of March was considered New Year’s Day, & marked the 1st day of Spring?
March 17, brings us the ‘wearing of the green’ for St. Patrick’s Day. The shamrock shows us the Trinity.
We celebrate the Spring or Vernal Equinox, on 20 March this year, also known as: Alban Eilir, Eostar, Lady Day, Ostara, & the Rites of Spring – when the Sun, because of the ‘precession of the equinoxes’, enters the sign of Pisces.
Day & night are equal, poised & balanced, but about to tip over to the side of light. It is sacred to the twilight time of dawn, youth, the morning star & the East. The Saxon goddess, Eostre (from whose name we get the direction East & the name of the Holiday Easter) is a dawn goddess, like Aurora & Eos. Just as the dawn is the time of new light, so the Vernal Equinox is the time of new life.
The Equinox is all about harmony & balance – that brief yet eternal time of equilibrium, when day & night are of equal length.
On the 21st begins the Iranian New Year celebration, Norooz, or ‘New Day’. In 622 AD, Mohammed led his followers from Mecca to Medina to escape assassination. According to the story, when his pursuers reached the cave where Mohammed & his followers had taken shelter for the night, they found a dove nesting in front of it & the entrance covered by a spider’s web. So the pursuers passed on, leaving them in peace. Mohammed continued on to Medina, where he & his followers were able to worship freely. Muslims consider this flight — or Hijrah — to be the beginning of their calendar year. People worship quietly on this day, which begins with the 1st sighting of the crescent moon, & in keeping with the rebirth of nature is also considered the 1st day of Spring.
Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov
March 25th is called the ‘Annunciation of Mary.’ – the day that the Angel Gabriel announced that the Luke Mary, was pregnant with the son of god ; who is born 9 months later, on Dec. 25th. How’s that for a nice little spring fertility symbol.
30 March is Rudolf Steiner’s Deathday in 1925
It’s interesting to note that March is the month that both Rudolf Steiner & Ita Wegman die & Marie Steiner von Sivers is born
It is also fitting that March is International Women’s month, since this is the time of the rebirth of nature. It’s a reminder that we have to break the bias of gender inequality to give birth to the future. The future is in our hands, the hands of the midwife, the lap of the mother, & the hands of the Peacemaker. Equity Now!
So let’s honor ourselves & thank the powers of the growing light, knowing that March may come in like a lion, but it goes out like a lamb – As we re-conceive of ourselves in alignment with the powers of Spring…
Peace & Blessed Bee…
~hag
2 March 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Now Jupiter & Venus (occult Mercury) separate. Venus moves above at dusk. Then as night deepens, waxing Bella Luna shines a couple degrees from Pollux. Castor looks on from nearby.
1963 – Deathday of Gunther Wachsmuth, founding member & Secretary of the original Vorstand
The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction… Is there a path to expansion…..?
PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA
Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm – Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $12
Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am CT– (10:30 am 1/2 hour break – 11 am) 12:30 pm CT CT– Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50
The Categories of Aristotle: A process of contraction…exploring a path to expansion…
Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to approach Aristotle’s gift to humanity……his Categories?
Perhaps , YES! But an initial acquaintance with them can lead out of the confinement of the intellectual concept to an experience of expansion supported by Eurythmy.
In the evening lecture Claudia will introduce the life of the Categories before they became concepts – Bringing the symbols in a sequence of sounds (called the Evolutionary Sequence ) out of their conceptual form, to life, supported by Eurythmy and examples of poetry.
During the workshop we will enter into the movement of the poetry presented during the lecture. This will be accessible to Eurythmists as well as to anyone interested in the life of language, poetry and our alphabet.
Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.
Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Resurrection
For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate
This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it.Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll
Course Number 231154 / Zoom Date: Thursday, May 11 Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance
Gerald Shepherd
When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.
Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.
This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.
Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.
Nancy Poer
~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor
with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy
Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom
We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.
For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.orgCultural Events & Festivals Coordinator *Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate
Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE
“MARCH in like a lion…Out like a lamb” doesn’t apply to our weather here in Chicago at least not today on this March 1st 2023…
Unless of course you consider that we are experiencing a powerful conjunction of Venus & Jupiter written into the stars of Pisces at sunset this evening!
From Astrosopher Jonathan Hilton: “Venus and Jupiter stand just into that fish (the Southern Fish) of the two fishes in Pisces, which is swimming towards Aquarius, our future, who one can see pouring the cosmic living water down upon the Sun now in Aquarius…
Rudolf Steiner once described this Piscean age as the time when humanity learns to stand on its own two feet. Pisces is connected to the hands and feet and thus to the will, through which we can transform the Earth or destroy it. Its now in our hands in this time of freedom to turn away from the gods or unite with them. In the two fish we can also see a picture of duality, even polarities, in which we live in this age of decision and choice. We stand always in the tension between the two…
Now we have Jupiter joining Venus here in Pisces, directly below the star Alpheratz. Both of these planetary spheres of being ask us to move into the future towards our higher calling. Jupiter as the sphere of the Spirits of Wisdom, wants to become the realization of our higher ideals, the awakening of the new living thinking, the foundation stone for the New Jerusalem…
Alpheratz is the star marking the forehead (third eye?) of Andromeda as well as the tip of the wing of Pegasus arising from the head of Andromeda. She has just been rescued by Perseus from the sea monster. Clearly Alpheratz carries a special call to humanity’s future evolution towards the new winged thinking, the living or etheric thinking, arising out of the transformed soul (Andromeda)…
Venus, that sphere of love and reintegration with the divine, became through Christ’s deeds on the Earth, the sphere which carries the new Christ mysteries in the Earth, the foundation for the new mysteries out of the true I Am. Yet Venus, the pentagram, can become the downward pentagram of Lucifer, serving only self-love, self-serving egotism, even the pentagram that serves black magic. The choice in our time of freedom, is up to us.
So perhaps one can see that a simple look up to the stars in the early evening sky during the coming week can expand from a feeling of awe and beauty for the two beautiful bright stars to an immense cosmic imagination to inspire our communion with the higher worlds of being.
We are in the season of Lent, a time of preparation for Easter, of remembering the suffering and sacrifice of Christ in his incarnating into flesh. It is a time when we can come to a deeper feeling for the sacrifice and death in us that can lead to resurrection. Just yesterday a friend gave me a poem, which to me speaks to this starry configuration and indeed in general to our feeling for the stars. It is titled Night Sky, by Kathleen Raine.
There came such a clear opening of the night sky, The deep glass of wonders, the dark mind In unclouded gaze of the abyss Opened like the expression of a face. I looked into that clarity where all things are End and beginning, and saw My destiny there: “So” I said, “no other Was possible ever. This is I. The pattern stands so for ever”. What am I? Bound and unbounded, A pattern among the stars, a point in motion Tracing my way. I am my way. It is I. I travel among the wonders. Held in that gaze and known In the eye of the abyss, “Let it be so”, I said, And my heart laughed with joy To know the death I must die.
399 – Death Day of Socrates – scholar, teacher and philosopher born in ancient Greece. His Socratic method laid the groundwork for Western systems of logic and philosophy. When the political climate of Greece turned against him, Socrates was sentenced to death by hemlock poisoning.
1244 – The Cathar fortress of Montsegur falls into the hands of the Inquisition
The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction… Is there a path to expansion…..?
PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA
Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm – Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $12
Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am CT– (10:30 am 1/2 hour break – 11 am) 12:30 pm CT CT– Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50
The Categories of Aristotle: A process of contraction…exploring a path to expansion…
Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to approach Aristotle’s gift to humanity……his Categories?
Perhaps , YES! But an initial acquaintance with them can lead out of the confinement of the intellectual concept to an experience of expansion supported by Eurythmy.
In the evening lecture Claudia will introduce the life of the Categories before they became concepts – Bringing the symbols in a sequence of sounds (called the Evolutionary Sequence ) out of their conceptual form, to life, supported by Eurythmy and examples of poetry.
During the workshop we will enter into the movement of the poetry presented during the lecture. This will be accessible to Eurythmists as well as to anyone interested in the life of language, poetry and our alphabet.
Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.
Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Resurrection
For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate
This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it.Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll
Course Number 231154 / Zoom Date: Thursday, May 11 Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance
Gerald Shepherd
When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.
Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.
This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.
Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.
Nancy Poer
~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor
with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy
Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom
We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.
For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.orgCultural Events & Festivals Coordinator *Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate
Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE
Greetings dear friends on this anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s Baptism on 27 February in 1861 –
I have been pondering the mysterious Birth of Rudolf Steiner for quite a while. Last year a group of us held a 3 day vigil from 25-27 February to live into this mystery. Many folks argue that we should celebrate Steiner’s birthday on the 27th of February, his Baptism day. Steiner himself names the 27th as his date of birth in his autobiography.
When we think of the connection with the Christ impulse, we can compare the powerful working that happens in the 3 day vigil between Good Friday & Easter Sunday, with the birth of Steiner who was given up for dead at his birth – We can also see a link with how the Cosmic Christ entered into the vessel of Jesus of Nazareth at the Baptism –
Maybe Steiner’s entelechy needed the Baptism rite to fully commit to incarnation…?
On a mundane level, I have also thought, well maybe Steiner simply names his birth date as 27 February because that is what his official papers say – Or then again, perhaps it’s because by not divulging his true birth date he thought it might afford him protection against the adversarial agencies that could use the cosmic information in his natal chart to thwart his mission..?
Those who can read a person’s destiny written in the stars, are able to use those impulses for their own purposes – for or againist that person…
But then this year, because I work deeply with Steiner’s Original Calendar of the Soul, where we can see the connections between cosmic & earthly historical events, as well as birth & death dates of influential human beings who have shaped our evolution – last night it occurred to me:
27 February is a very auspicious day – perhaps Steiner uses this date for his birthday as a pointer & to a great mystery:
27 February is the death day of Mani (277) – the highest initiate; who “According to Rudolf Steiner, the Young Man of Nain, the son of a widow, whom Christ Jesus raised from the dead, became Mani, the founder of Manicheism, in his following incarnation, and will become the Maitreya Buddha in time to come…” to guide humanity thru Christic love to redeem evil… (from a recorded conversation with Christian Community priests Walter Klein and Emil Bock in 1924)
AND today is also the death day of Comte de St. Germain (1784), an incarnation of ChristianRosenkreuz, whose ‘tomb is opened every 100 years’ allowing the secret teachings of our highest evolution to be revealed so that they can become manifest in the world…
Could Steiner be revealing to us his profound connection with these 2 great servants of humanity?
It is true that those whose death day is the same as our birthday become our co-workers & mentors during that life.
Is that why he put 27 February as his birth date in his autobiography…?
Ever pondering
~hag
27 February 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Waxing Bella Luna shines just a degree or two from Mars tonight, as shown above. Watch their separation change hour by hour. The Moon occults Mars for parts of the Arctic. Spot the big, bright, equilateral Winter Triangle in the south-southeast. Sirius is its brightest and lowest star. Betelgeuse is above Sirius by about two fists at arm’s length. Left of them shines Procyon.
RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL translated with added titles by Roy Sadler LENT II Joy Will Arise v47 From worldwide womb will rise the joy of growth, enlivening the senses’ glory: and may it find my strength of thought defended by the strength of God, the living bedrock of my being.
It was Steiner’s birthday last Saturday, but his birthday verse was not last week’s or this one. In 1861 Easter was early on March 31st. He was born on the day of the full moon in the week of v48, a very special birthday verse as I shall explain next week. This is a quote from Eleanor Merry in her Calendar of the Soul Commentary, relevant to both v47 & 48, “When our thinking can unite with the light of the Sun, it becomes creative for the future. And when we can be quickened within by the same powers that quicken the outer world into life, then will joy infill our deeds, and they will be in harmony with the deeds of Cosmic Beings.”
This is this week’s mirror verse. ASCENSION The Risen Self v6 Arisen from my own persona my real self appears as revelation of the spheres that in the powers of time and space the world is showing me as paradigm that is divine and everywhere portrays the image in whose mirror I come true.
(Interesting to note those who share a birthday with Steiner’s Baptism day: Constantine the Great, St. John Chrysostom, Mozart, Friedrich Schelling, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Giuseppe Verdi – see below)
272 – Birthday of Constantine the Great, Roman emperor
407 – Deathday of St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, was an important Early Church Father. He is known for his preaching & public speaking, his denunciation of abuse of authority by both ecclesiastical & political leaders, the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, & his ascetic sensibilities. The epithet Χρυσόστομος (Chrysostomos, anglicized as Chrysostom) means “golden-mouthed” in Greek & denotes his celebrated eloquence. Chrysostom was among the most prolific authors in the early Christian Church exceeded only by Augustine in the quantity of his surviving writings. John was born in Antioch in 349 to Greco-Syrian parents. His mother Anthusa as a pagan & his father was a high-ranking military officer. John’s father died soon after his birth & he was raised by his mother. As a result of his mother’s influential connections in the city, John began his education under the pagan teacher Libanius. From Libanius, John acquired the skills for a career in rhetoric, as well as a love of the Greek language & literature.
A late medieval legend relates that, when John Chrysostom was a hermit in the desert, he was approached by a royal princess in distress. The Saint, thinking she was a demon, at first refused to help her, but the princess convinced him that she was a Christian & would be devoured by wild beasts if she were not allowed to enter his cave. He therefore admitted her, carefully dividing the cave in two parts, one for each of them. In the morning she had given birth to a child she claimed was his. He then went to Rome to beg absolution, which was refused. Chrysostom made a vow that he would never rise from the ground until his sins were expiated, & for years he lived like a beast, crawling on all fours & feeding on wild grasses & roots. One day the princess reappeared, suckling the saint’s baby, who miraculously pronounced his sins forgiven. This last scene was very popular from the late 15th century onwards as a subject for engravers & artists.
1756 – Birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in full Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, baptized as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. A prolific & influential composer of the Classical era. Born in Salzburg, he showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard & violin, he composed from the age of 5 & performed before European royalty. At 17, Mozart was engaged as a musician at the Salzburg court, but grew restless & traveled in search of a better position. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security.
Mozart’s physical appearance described him as “a remarkably small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair of which he was rather vain, except for his large intense eyes, he gave no signs of his genius.” His facial complexion was pitted, a reminder of his childhood case of smallpox. He loved elegant clothing. Of his voice his wife later wrote that it “was a tenor, rather soft in speaking and delicate in singing, but when anything excited him, or it became necessary to exert it, it was both powerful and energetic”.
Mozart usually worked long & hard, finishing compositions at a tremendous pace as deadlines approached. He often made sketches & drafts; unlike Beethoven’s these are mostly not preserved, as his wife sought to destroy them after his death.
Mozart lived at the center of the Viennese musical world, & knew a great number & variety of people: fellow musicians, theatrical performers, fellow Salzburgers, & aristocrats, including some acquaintance with the Emperor Joseph II. He enjoyed billiards & dancing, & kept pets: a canary, a starling, a dog, & a horse for recreational riding. He had a startling fondness for scatological humor, which is preserved in his surviving letters, notably those written to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart around 1777–1778, & in his correspondence with his sister & parents. Mozart also wrote scatological music, a series of canons that he sang with his friends.
During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, & operas, & portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his death. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze & two sons. He composed more than 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, & choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, & his influence is profound on subsequent Western art music.
1775 – Birthday of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Johann Gottlieb Fichte, his mentor in his early years, & Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, his former university roommate, early friend, & later rival. Some later philosophers such as Martin Heidegger & Slavoj Žižek have shown interest in re-examining Schelling’s body of work. Quotes:
“Nature is visible Spirit; Spirit is invisible Nature.” (Ideen, “Introduction”)
“History as a whole is a progressive, gradually self-disclosing revelation of the Absolute.” (System of Transcendental Idealism, 1800)
“Has creation a final goal? And if so, why was it not reached at once? Why was the consummation not realized from the beginning? To these questions there is but one answer: Because God is Life, and not merely Being.” (Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, 1809)
“Only he who has tasted freedom can feel the desire to make over everything in its image, to spread it throughout the whole universe.” (Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, 1809)
“As there is nothing before or outside of God he must contain within himself the ground of his existence. All philosophies say this, but they speak of this ground as a mere concept without making it something real and actual.” (Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, 1809)
“God then has no beginning only insofar as there is no beginning of his beginning. The beginning in God is eternal beginning, that is, such a one as was beginning from all eternity, and still is, and also never ceases to be beginning.” (Quoted in Hartshorne & Reese, Philosophers Speak of God, Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1953, p. 237.)
1807 – Birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1861 – The emergency Baptism of Rudolf Steiner
1901 – Deathday of Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi an Italian opera composer. Verdi was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, & developed a musical education with the help of a local patron. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera . In his early operas Verdi demonstrated a sympathy with the Risorgimento movement which sought the unification of Italy. He also participated briefly as an elected politician. An intensely private person, Verdi however did not seek to ingratiate himself with popular movements & as he became professionally successful was able to reduce his operatic workload & sought to establish himself as a landowner in his native region. He surprised the musical world by returning, after his success with the opera Aida (1871), with three late masterpieces: his Requiem (1874), & the operas Otello (1887) &Falstaff (1893). His operas remain extremely popular, especially the three peaks of his ‘middle period’: Rigoletto, Il trovatore & La traviata.
1922 – A challenge to the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, allowing women the right to vote, is rebuffed by the Supreme Court
1939 – United States labor law: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that sit-down strikes violate property owners’ rights & are therefore illegal
2004 – The initial version of the John Jay Report, with details about the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the United States, is released. The report determined that, during the period from 1950 to 2002, a total of 10,667 individuals had made allegations of child sexual abuse. Of these, the dioceses had been able to identify 6,700 unique accusations against 4,392 clergy over that period in the USA, which is about 4% of all 109,694 ordained clergy i.e. priests or deacons or members of religious orders, active in the USA during the time covered by the study. Roughly 4% of them were accused. However, of these 4392 accused, only 252 (5.7% of those accused or less than 0.1% of total clergy) were convicted. The number of alleged abuses increased in the 1960s, peaked in the 1970s, declined in the 1980s, & by the 1990s had returned to the levels of the 1950s. In summary, over a 50-year period, out of more than 100,000 priests deacons & religious order clergy, 4,392 (~4.4%) were accused of sexual abuse, 252 (<0.26%) were convicted & 100 (<0.1%) sentenced to prison
The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction… Is there a path to expansion…..?
PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA
Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm – Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $12
Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am CT– (10:30 am 1/2 hour break – 11 am) 12:30 pm CT CT– Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50
The Categories of Aristotle: A process of contraction…exploring a path to expansion…
Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to approach Aristotle’s gift to humanity……his Categories?
Perhaps , YES! But an initial acquaintance with them can lead out of the confinement of the intellectual concept to an experience of expansion supported by Eurythmy.
In the evening lecture Claudia will introduce the life of the Categories before they became concepts – Bringing the symbols in a sequence of sounds (called the Evolutionary Sequence ) out of their conceptual form, to life, supported by Eurythmy and examples of poetry.
During the workshop we will enter into the movement of the poetry presented during the lecture. This will be accessible to Eurythmists as well as to anyone interested in the life of language, poetry and our alphabet.
Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.
Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Resurrection
For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate
This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it.Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll
Course Number 231154 / Zoom Date: Thursday, May 11 Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance
Gerald Shepherd
When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.
Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.
This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.
Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.
Nancy Poer
~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor
with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy
Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom
We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.
For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.orgCultural Events & Festivals Coordinator *Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate
Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE
Standing on the cornerstone Stretched out on the Rose Cross I feel the Presence Of the Trinity Pouring in Thru the Architect of Freedom – The Good Doctor Steiner – Bringing the healing medicine – A radiant dose of Sophianic Wisdom – Fortified with Cosmic Iron – Held with Love In the Christic Matrix… Ready… To reveal the Divine Plan Thru my whetted willing That I may co-create The true Anthropos. ~hag
Greetings friends on this 162st Birthday of Dr. Rudolf Steiner.
Last year in my Applied Anthroposophy Chrysalis Group: ‘The Cycle of the Year as Path of Initiation’ I gave a little overview of Rudolf Steiner’s biography, & we all shared how Rudolf Steiner came into our lives. Here is the video.
And here is My humble attempt to create a more extensive Biography
Here’s an example: “After long years of studying the social question it has come to me that the basic question, which is considered today as a uniform abstract formulation, should be seen in a threefold way: the first, being like a spiritual question, the second, like a question of law and the third as an economic question. What has arisen out of the modern capitalist economic life has developed from the basis of technology and this has hypnotised people’s focus in recent times only on to economic life, and have quite drawn away the awareness of the social question beside the economic question to above all also a spiritual question and a question of rights.” ~Rudolf Steiner, The Social Question, given at Zurich, 25 February 1919
Chart via John Jardine Goss/ EarthSky.
25 February 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The waxing crescent moon visits the constellation Taurus the Bull, shining near the glittering Pleiades star cluster, Today on Rudolf Steiner’s b-day – February 25, 2023. Then, on the following evening, Bella Luna is within a triangle formed by the Pleiades, the fiery red star Aldebaran, and even-brighter Mars.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
777 – Deathday of Saint Walpurga The earliest representation of Walpurga, in the early 11th-century Hitda Codex, made in Cologne, depicts her holding stylized stalks of grain. The grain attribute represents the older pagan concept of the Grain Mother. Peasant farmers fashioned her replica in a corn dolly at harvest time & told tales to explain Saint Walpurga’s presence in the grain sheaf. St. Richard, when starting with his two sons on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, entrusted Walburga, then 11 years old, to the abbess of Wimborne. Walpurga was educated by the nuns of Wimborne Abbey, Dorset, where she spent 26 years as a member of the community. She then travelled with her brothers, Willibald & Winebald, to Francia to assist Saint Boniface, her mother’s brother, in evangelizing among the still-pagan Germans. Because of her rigorous training, she was able to write her brother Winibald’s vita & an account in Latin of his travels in Palestine. As a result, she is often called the first female author of both England & Germany. Walpurga became a nun in the double monastery of Heidenheim am Hahnenkamm, which was founded by her other brother, Willibald, who appointed her as his successor. Following his death in 751, she became the abbess
1841 – Birthday of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French painter & sculptor
~hag
1861 – Birthday of Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner
Some say the Midwife gave him up for dead when he was born – he was so small & sickly; so his parents arranged for a quick baptism which occurred on February 27th. He hung on against all odds, & the Church record became the document for his ‘Official’ Birthday. Steiner himself did not try to set the record straight, & so to this day there is a dispute as to when his actual natal return is – But the Stars Know!
The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction… Is there a path to expansion…..?
PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA
Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm – Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $12
Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am CT– (10:30 am 1/2 hour break – 11 am) 12:30 pm CT CT– Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50
The Categories of Aristotle: A process of contraction…exploring a path to expansion…
Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to approach Aristotle’s gift to humanity……his Categories?
Perhaps , YES! But an initial acquaintance with them can lead out of the confinement of the intellectual concept to an experience of expansion supported by Eurythmy.
In the evening lecture Claudia will introduce the life of the Categories before they became concepts – Bringing the symbols in a sequence of sounds (called the Evolutionary Sequence ) out of their conceptual form, to life, supported by Eurythmy and examples of poetry.
During the workshop we will enter into the movement of the poetry presented during the lecture. This will be accessible to Eurythmists as well as to anyone interested in the life of language, poetry and our alphabet.
Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.
Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Resurrection
For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate
This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it.Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll
Course Number 231154 / Zoom Date: Thursday, May 11 Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance
Gerald Shepherd
When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.
Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.
This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.
Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.
Nancy Poer
~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor
with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy
Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom
We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.
For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.orgCultural Events & Festivals Coordinator *Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate
Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE
Greetings Beloved Ones on this Ash Wednesday 2023 – The start of the Lenten-Tide Season.
My father’s people, the Italian side, were Catholic. I attended many wonderful incense filled, pageant-like Masses with my Grandmother, (who was a not so secret ‘Strega’) dedicated to The Blessed Virgin Mary & all the Saints, in an practical ‘peasant = of the land’, kind of way.
My mother’s folks from Ireland ‘wore the orange’ = Protestant/unionist’, but called themselves Baptist after becoming farmers in Tennessee. My mother had to convert to Catholicism in order to marry my father, as that was the way in those days. As children my siblings & I, who were baptized in the Catholic Church, were never-the-less bussed off to ‘Baptist Bible School’ for the simple reason that the bus came to our corner every Sunday – which conveniently afforded our hard working parent’s a day off from us 4 kids.
I did not have a good experience there. On the outside they preached a sexist totalitarian ‘morality’ (no dancing-really?) & yet behind closed doors the pastor molested certain ‘chosen ones’- myself included. So as you might imagine I swore off organized religion; & related more to my Strega Nona’s more practical way of worshipping, with Mary = The Divine Feminine at the center.
Thru karmic circumstances I started working the path of the modern Rosicrucian, at a very young age, which is, I would say, an Esoteric or Cosmic Christian path. Since discovering Rudolf Steiner in college I have lived deeply into the truth of being an Anthroposopher –
After meeting Rev. Gisela Wielki when the Christian Community Seminary was here in Chicago & thru the love of Rev. Richard Dancey, I became an active member of the Christian Community Church, part of an international movement for religious renewal, founded in 1922 with the help of Rudolf Steiner, which has a kind of Lent – a shorter Passion-tide.
And yet this year I feel the need to use the opportunity afforded by the 40 days of Lent to deepen my inner work.
There is something powerful about the rhythm of 40 days – which shows up often in the Bible.
Since the number 40 appears so often in contexts dealing with judgment or testing, many understand it to be the number of “probation” or “trial.” For instance:
In the Old Testament, when God destroyed the earth with water – He caused it to rain 40 days & 40 nights (Genesis 7:12).
After Moses killed the Egyptian, he fled to Midian, where he spent 40 years in the desert tending flocks (Acts 7:30).
Moses was on Mount Sinai for 40 days & 40 nights (Exodus 24:18).
Moses interceded on Israel’s behalf for 40 days & 40 nights (Deuteronomy 9:18, 25).
Three kings reigned for 40 years each: Saul, David & Solomon – That’s no coincidence. Forty years is considered a generation in the Bible (i.e. a new group of Israelites that rises up, sustains itself, then dies off). For the three kings of antiquity, this measurement of time also contains a warning—20 years of their rule was marked by prosperity & 20 years by ruin
The Law specified a maximum number of lashes a man could receive for a crime, setting the limit at 40 (Deuteronomy 25:3).
The Israelite spies took 40 days to spy out Canaan (Numbers 13:25).
The Israelites wandered for 40 years (Deuteronomy 8:2-5).
Before Samson’s deliverance, Israel served the Philistines for 40 years (Judges 13:1).
Osmar Schindler
Goliath taunted Saul’s army for 40 days before David arrived to slay him (1 Samuel 17:16).
When Elijah fled from Jezebel, he traveled 40 days & 40 nights to Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19:8).
The number 40 also appears in the prophecies of Ezekiel (4:6; 29:11-13) Ezekiel laid on his right side for 40 days to “bear the iniquity” of Judea’s sins & Jonah (3:4).
In the New Testament, Jesus fasted for 40 days (Matthew 4:2). (So did Moses & Elijah)
There are 40 days between The Resurrection & The Ascension (Acts 1:3), When the disciple received the esoteric teachings of the Risen Christ.
According to Steiner’s original Calendar of the Soul 23 February was the day Lazarus was raised from the dead, being that Good Friday & Easter came on 3/5 April.
The normal gestation of a human Pregnancy usually last 40 weeks
And so dear friends, I will be taking this 40 day journey – a Path to the Resurrection – asking myself: When I stand at the dawning of the New Sun on Easter Sunday, how do I want to be different?
22 February 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”Georgiana Houghton
1632 – Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is published.
1732 – Birthday of George Washington, American general & politician, 1st President of the United States
1788 – Birthday of Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher & author
1876 – Birthday of Ita Wegman, founder of Anthroposophical medicine & close collaborator of Rudolf Steiner. She also developed a special form of massage therapy, called rhythmical massage, & other therapeutic treatments.
Ita Wegman, as she was known throughout her life, was born as Maria Ita Wegman in Indonesia, the first child of a Dutch colonial family. Around the turn of the century, she returned to Europe (she had visited before) & studied therapeutic gymnastics & massage. In 1902, when she was 26, she met Rudolf Steiner for the first time. Five years later she began medical school at the University of Zurich, where women were not discriminated to study medicine. She was granted a diploma as a medical doctor in 1911 with a specialization in women’s medicine & joined an existing medical practice.
In 1917, having opened an independent practice, she developed a cancer treatment using an extract of mistletoe following indications from Steiner. This first remedy, which she called Iscar, was later developed into Iscador & has become an approved cancer treatment in Germany & a number of other countries.
By 1919 she had a joint practice together with two other doctors, also women. In 1920 she purchased land in Arlesheim, where she opened her own clinic, the Klinisch-Therapeutisches Institut, the first center for anthroposophical medicine. In 1922 she founded a therapeutic home for mentally handicapped children, Haus Sonnenhof, also in Arlesheim, & co-founded a pharmaceutical laboratory, Weleda, that has since grown into a significant producer of medicines & health-care products.
In the following year, Rudolf Steiner asked Wegman to join the Executive Council of the newly reformed Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. She also directed the Medical Section of the research center at the Goetheanum. Together, Wegman & Steiner wrote what was to be Steiner’s last book, Extending Practical Medicine, which gave a theoretical basis to the new medicine they were developing. The book was partly written while Wegman cared for Steiner, who was already terminally ill. Wegman founded a new medical journal, Natura, the following year.
In 1936, the clinic opened a second home in Ascona, Switzerland. Shortly thereafter, difficulties between Wegman & the rest of the Executive Council flared up, & Wegman was asked to leave the Council; in addition, she & a number of supporters had their membership in the Anthroposophical Society itself withdrawn. The medical work flourished, however, & Wegman travelled extensively in support of the rapidly growing movement to extend medicine’s limits; she was especially active in the Netherlands & England during this time. Wegman died in Arlesheim in 1943, at the age of 67.
Ita Wegman is a close collaborator with Rudolf Steiner thruout many incarnations:
Eabani – Gilgamesh Cratylus – Artemisia in the era of Heraclitus of Ephesus Aristotle – Alexander the Great Schionatulander – Sigune St ThomasAquino – Reginald of Piperno confessor to Aquino Dr. Rudolf Steiner – Dr. Ita Wegman
1943 – Deathday of 1943 – Hans & Sophie Scholl, German activists. Sophie a German student along with her brother Hans were anti-Nazi political activists, active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany. They were convicted of high treason after distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich (LMU).
In the early summer of 1942, Scholl, his sister Sophie, Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Christoph Probst, & Alexander Schmorell, co-authored 6 anti-Nazi Third Reich political resistance leaflets. Calling themselves the White Rose, they instructed Germans to practice nonviolent resistance against the Nazis. The group had been horrified by the behavior of some German soldiers on the Eastern Front, where they had witnessed cruelty towards Jews in Poland & Russia.
Hans & Sophie Scholl & Christopher Probst were beheaded by Johann Reichhart in Munich’s Stadelheim Prison. The execution was supervised by Dr. Walter Roemer, the enforcement chief of the Munich district court. Scholl’s last words were “Es lebe die Freiheit!” (“Long live freedom!”). Shortly thereafter, most of the other students involved were arrested & executed as well.
1932 – Birthday of Ted Kennedy, an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Massachusetts for over forty years from 1962 until his death in 2009. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died & is the fourth-longest-continuously-serving senator in United States history, having served there for almost 47 years.
For many years, Ted Kennedy was the most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, & he was also the last surviving, longest-living, & youngest son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. & Rose Kennedy. He was the youngest brother of John F. Kennedy—the 35th President of the United States—& Senator Robert F. Kennedy, both victims of assassination, & the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.
The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction… Is there a path to expansion…..?
PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA
Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm – Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $12
Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am CT– (10:30 am 1/2 hour break – 11 am) 12:30 pm CT CT– Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50
The Categories of Aristotle: A process of contraction…exploring a path to expansion…
Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to approach Aristotle’s gift to humanity……his Categories?
Perhaps , YES! But an initial acquaintance with them can lead out of the confinement of the intellectual concept to an experience of expansion supported by Eurythmy.
In the evening lecture Claudia will introduce the life of the Categories before they became concepts – Bringing the symbols in a sequence of sounds (called the Evolutionary Sequence ) out of their conceptual form, to life, supported by Eurythmy and examples of poetry.
During the workshop we will enter into the movement of the poetry presented during the lecture. This will be accessible to Eurythmists as well as to anyone interested in the life of language, poetry and our alphabet.
Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.
Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Resurrection
For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate
This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it.Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll
Course Number 231154 / Zoom Date: Thursday, May 11 Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance
Gerald Shepherd
When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.
Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.
This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.
Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.
Nancy Poer
~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor
with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy
Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom
We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.
For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.orgCultural Events & Festivals Coordinator *Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate
Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE
