Thank you to everyone who gathered with the Regional Councils of the ASA for our 1st Roots & Renewal Session: From Artemis to the Representative of Humanity and Beyond. In this series we are taking stock of the signposts from the past as well as forging our way forward  – toward the Jubilee – the 100-Year anniversary of the Refounding of the Anthroposophical Society, at the Christmas Conference; when Rudolf Steiner took on the leadership of the Society, making the sacrifice to align his karma with ours, strengthening our connection to the movement – to Anthroposophia, & the Spiritual Beings working with us to manifest Spiritual Science on Earth during this Michaelic Age.

Those of you who follow this blog know I am keen on making karmic connections around the birth & death days of influential individualities. While researching, I came across Steiner attributing July 21^st as the Birthday of Alexander the Great – which he also reveals was the very same day in 356 BC that the Temple of Ephesus went up in flames.

Legend has it that the Goddess Artemis, to whom the Temple was dedicated, was away that day – busy attending to the birth of Alexander. I love to look behind these kinds of myths & stories to see the spiritual reality speaking.

These connections peaked my interest, so I got to work creating a compilation of insights from 4 lectures by Rudolf Steiner where he outlines the influences between the burning of the Temple of Ephesus, (which BTW was considered one of the 7 Wonders of the World) the birth of Alexander the Great, & the burning of the 1st Goetheanum 100 years ago in 1922, so this year in 2022, it seems especially important to explore the spiritual underpinnings of this event, in relation to these other turning points in time.

Three of the lectures I worked with are from those famous evening lectures that Steiner gave during the Christmas Conference: WORLD HISTORY IN THE LIGHT OF ANTHROPOSOPHY. Those of you who joined us for the Epic of Gilgamesh Storytelling during the ASA Holy Nights adventure may remember that these lectures were our foundation. – Reading further, Steiner transitions quite seamlessly into the Mysteries of Ephesus & Alexandria.

And the 4^th resource comes a few months after the Christmas Conference at Easter-Tide in 1924, where Steiner reveals how the Mysteries of Ephesus became inscribed into the Cosmic Ethers after the Burning of the Temple; & how Aristotle, the teacher of Alexander the Great, was able to receive these mysteries by reading the Cosmic Script. Renewing them – he brought these mysteries back to the world in what we call the ‘Aristotelian Categories’.

So amazing to make these cosmic & historic connections – & bring them into our thinking now – And then really it’s up to us to make something of them.

Steiner tells us that these categories have not been properly understood; they are thought of as a mere list; but they are meant to be meditated on, in order to fully receive the essence beyond the logical form.

After reading the compilation together last night, we co-created the Social Sculpture that the break-out room provides. Asking ourselves things like: How can we be awake to this reality of ‘The Jealously of the gods’? As well as ‘The Jealously of Men’ so prevalent today? Some folks also pondered the Aristotle’s Categories.

For me, thru working with this material, (over 90 pages in these 4 powerful lectures) I have been striving to use my imaginative thinking to carry the clues that Steiner gives to connect the mysteries that stand behind: The Colossus of Artemis, which was a symbol of the Logos before it came to Earth in a human form, & the Representative of Humanity, The Word made manifest – The Christ impulse of Wonder, Compassion, & Conscience giving meaning to human evolution. A lightbulb goes off in my heart & mind when I add in the open secret that: ‘The Group’ is in reality a veil of the New Isis – which the true human being is called to remove, bringing the full blossom of Wisdom to the seed of Love.

It all becomes clear that we are meant to connect the dots inscribed into the ethers thru the burning of these 2 Temples – One to Artemis, the Comic Logos & the other to Anthroposophia, the Truth-Wrought-Word of the Human Being. Written in the cosmic script we find the old clairvoyance bestowed thru initiation into the Mysteries of Ephesus, being carried into the thinking of Aristotle, to inform Alexander’s Michaelic Campaign – Bringing the Mysteries of the East in a renewed form to the West; preparing the way for the Christ Event that came at the Turning Point of Time.

And then following the individualities of Aristotle & Alexander into their lives reunited once again on the Dornach hill, standing together before the burning of the Goetheanum – as the New Mysteries of the Reverse Cultus became inscribed also into the ethers, expanding & evolving the Cosmic Script, renewing The Logos – which awaits our interaction.

Friends, the Statue of the Representative of Humanity stands with us today as the living link between the past, present & future – if we will to unveil the New Isis hidden in the hand-hewn carving, whose essence dwells in the Dodecahedron of Love, that we must cultivate within our heart-thinking – to open our humanness to the Wisdom of the Christ – then the burning will not have been in vain…

Here is the Recording from our Roots & Renewal Session # 1: From Artemis to the Representative of Humanity and Beyond

We can explore this further together at the ‘Renewing the Mysteries Conference’.

Until soon

~hag

22 July 2022 – “Speaking with the Stars”

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

El Greco

Feast Day of Mary Magdalene, sister of Martha & Lazarus; who stood beneath the cross on Golgotha, & who was the 1^st to see the risen Christ…The woman initiate represents the soul in humankind, Aisha, as Moses called it. The once turbulent Mary Magdalene, whose seven demons Jesus had driven out according to the Biblical account, became his most devoted disciple.  

It was at the farm in Bethany, with Mary, the mother of Jesus, Lazuars, Martha & the Magdalene that Jesus liked to rest from the labors of his mission. There He freely gave his most gentle consolations & in loving conversations He spoke of the Divine Mysteries which He did not yet always confide to his disciples. Sometimes at the hour when the gold of the sunset faded among the olive branches, when twilight slipped between their delicate foliage, Jesus became thoughtful. A shadow fell over his illumined face. He thought of the hardships of his work, the wavering faith of the Apostles, the powerful enemies in the world. The Temple, Jerusalem, humankind, with its crimes & ingratitude, rolling over Him like a living mountain. Struck by the solemnity of his voice, the women held his soul. However unchangeable the serenity of Jesus might be, they understood that His spirit was as though closed in the coffin of confinement which separated him from the joys of earth. They sensed the destiny of the Son of God; they felt His unshakable resolution.

Sometimes called simply the Magdalene, Mary is mentioned by name twelve times in the canonical gospels, more than any of the apostles. The Gospel of Luke 8:2-3 lists Mary as one of the women who traveled with Jesus & helped support his ministry “out of their resources”, indicating that she was wealthy. The same passage also states that seven demons had been driven out of her, a statement which is repeated in the longer ending of Mark. In all four canonical gospels, she is a witness to the crucifixion of Jesus &, in the Synoptic Gospels, she is also present at his burial. All four gospels identify her, either alone or as a member of a larger group of women, as the first witness to the empty tomb, & the first to testify to Jesus’s resurrection. For these reasons, she is known in many Christian traditions as the “apostle to the apostles”.

Mary is a central figure in later apocryphal Gnostic Christian writings, including the Dialogue of the Savior, the Pistis Sophia, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, & the Gospel of Mary. These texts portray her as Jesus’s closest disciple & the only one who truly understood his teachings. In the Gnostic gospels, Mary Magdalene’s closeness to Jesus results in tension with the other disciples, particularly Simon Peter.

During the Middle Ages, Mary Magdalene was conflated in western tradition with Mary of Bethany & the unnamed “sinful woman” who anoints Jesus’s feet in Luke 7:36-50, resulting in a widespread but inaccurate belief that she was a repentant prostitute or promiscuous woman. In 1969, the identification of Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany & the “sinful woman” was removed from the General Roman Calendar, but the view of her as a former prostitute has persisted in popular culture.

Mary Magdalene is considered to be a saint by the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, & Lutheran churches—with a feast day of July 22. During the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church used Mary Magdalene as a symbol of penance. Other Protestant churches honor her as a heroine of the faith. The Eastern Orthodox churches also commemorate her on the Sunday of the Myrrhbearers, the Orthodox equivalent of one of the Western Three Marys traditions.

Elaborate medieval legends from western Europe tell exaggerated tales of Mary Magdalene’s wealth & beauty, as well as her journey to southern France.

1099 –Godfrey of Bouillon is elected the first Defender of the Holy Sepulchre of The Kingdom of Jerusalem. After the successful siege of Jerusalem in 1099, Godfrey became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He refused the title of King, however, as he believed that the true King of Jerusalem was Christ, preferring the title of Advocate (i.e., protector or defender) of the Holy Sepulchre (Latin: Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri). He is also known as the “Baron of the Holy Sepulchre” & the “Crusader King”. Godfrey is a key figure in the theories put forth in the books The Holy Blood & the Holy Grail & The Da Vinci Code. In the Paradiso segment of his Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri sees the spirit of Godfrey, together with Roland’s, in the Heaven of Mars with the other “warriors of the faith”. Godfrey is depicted in Georg Friedrich Händel’s opera Rinaldo (1711) as Tasso’s “Goffredo”.

1499 – Battle of Dornach: The Swiss decisively defeat the army of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor & concluded the Swabian War between the Swiss & the Swabian League.

1893 – Katharine Lee Bates writes America the Beautiful after admiring the view from the top of Pikes Peak near Colorado Springs, Colorado. At the age of 33, Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College, had taken a train trip to teach a short summer school session at Colorado College. Several of the sights on her trip inspired her, & they found their way into her poem, including the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the “White City” with its promise of the future contained within its gleaming white buildings; the wheat fields of America’s heartland Kansas, through which her train was riding & the majestic view of the Great Plains from high atop Pikes Peak. On the pinnacle of that mountain, the words of the poem started to come to her, & she wrote them down upon returning to her hotel room at the original Antlers Hotel. The poem was initially published two years later in The Congregationalist to commemorate the Fourth of July. It quickly caught the public’s fancy. Just as Bates had been inspired to write her poem, Samuel A Ward, too, was inspired. The tune came to him while he was on a ferryboat trip from Coney Island back to his home in New York City after a leisurely summer day & he immediately wrote it down. He was so anxious to capture the tune in his head, he asked fellow passenger friend Harry Martin for his shirt cuff to write the tune on.

1946 – King David Hotel bombing: A Zionist underground organisation, the Irgun, bombs the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, site of the civil administration and military headquarters for Mandatory Palestine, resulting in 491 deaths.

~aCord change –
from a cosmos of wisdom to one of love…
here the moon leaps out of the spiral…
self-ignition, springing from the middle of the vortex,
where the old ends & the new meets re-birth…
~hag