Pearl

August 29, 2023Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

~The Lady of Shalott by William Holman Hunt

One of my ongoing Life Questions has to do with understanding Karmic Relationships. So I was excited to jump into this Steiner lecture given on this day in 1906. It is full of the mystery wisdom seen in the Evolution of Human Consciousness – the awareness of our progressive internal & external existence, & is worth the read.

AT THE GATES OF SPIRITUAL SCIENCE, GA 95, lecture 8. Good and Evil. Individual Karmic Questions. 29 August 1906, Stuttgart

“…What does occult science have to say about the origin of conscience? How did such an inner voice come into being?..

Conscience is the outcome of experiences spread over a number of incarnations…it has come into being as a result of trial and error…

A motive such as conscience binds itself to the etheric body, becoming in time a permanent characteristic of it because the astral body has been so often convinced that this or that would not do.

Another interesting karmic relationship is between an habitually selfish attitude and a loving sympathy with others. Some people are hardened egoists — not only in their acquisitiveness — and others are unselfish and sympathetic. Both attitudes depend on the etheric body and may even find expression in the physical body. People who in one life have been habitually selfish will age quickly in their next life; they seem to shrivel up. On the other hand, if in one life you have been ready to make sacrifices and have loved others, you will remain young and hale. In this way you can prepare even the physical body for the next life.

Fabre d’Olivet, who has investigated the origins of the Book of Genesis, once used a beautiful simile, comparing destiny with a natural process. The valuable pearl, he says, derives from an illness: it is a secretion of the oyster, so that in this case life has to fall sick in order to produce something precious. In the same way, physical illnesses in one life reappear in the next life as physical beauty. Either the physical body becomes more beautiful as a result of the illness it endured; or it may be that an illness a man has caught from infection in his environment is compensated by the beauty of his new environment.

Beauty thus develops, karmically, out of pain, suffering, privation and illness. This may seem a startling connection, but it is a fact. Even the appreciation of beauty develops in this way: there can be no beauty in the world without pain and suffering and illness. The same general law holds for the history of man’s evolution. You will see from this how wonderful karmic relationships really are, and how questions about evil, illness and pain cannot be answered without knowledge of the important inner relationships within the evolution of humanity.

What is inward has to become outward, and man will rise still higher when his karma has worked itself out. With all this something of extraordinary interest is connected. Centuries ago, with the future development of humanity in view, secret Orders which set themselves the highest conceivable tasks were established. One such Order was the Manichean…

The power to effect this change will bring about a condition of moral holiness on Earth. But this can be achieved only if the evil has first come into existence; then the power needed to overcome the evil will yield a power that can reach the heights of holiness.

A field has to be treated with manure and the manure has to ferment in the soil; similarly, humanity needs the manure of evil in order to attain to the highest holiness. And herein lies the mission of evil.

A man’s muscles get strong by use; and equally, if good is to rise to the heights of holiness, it must first overcome the evil which opposes it. The task of evil is to promote the ascent of man. Things such as this give us a glimpse into the secret of life.

Later on, when man has overcome evil, he can go on to redeem the creatures he has thrust down, and at whose cost he has ascended. That is the purpose of evolution…

If you do not look beyond the physical world of the senses, you will never understand illness, or the mission of evil. In all such relationships there is a deep meaning. Evolution had to take its course in this way, through a process of splitting off, because man was to become an inward being; he had to put all this out of himself in order that he might be able to see his own self.

So we can come to understand the mission of illness, of evil, and even of the external world. We are led to these great interconnections by studying the law of karma…” ~Rudolf Steiner

29 August 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Tonight is the Eve of the Full Blue (2nd full moon this month) Sturgeon Moon. Both Saturn & Bella Luna are at opposition, so they shine together

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

“History, historical life, will only be seen in the right light when a true consciousness of the connection between the so-called living with the so-called dead can be developed” – The Living and the Dead by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, 5th February, 1918

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

33 – Beheading of John the Baptist

“If we pass on to the sixth chapter of Mark we hear fully described how King Herod had John the Baptist beheaded. The tortured conscience of Herod arouses a strange foreboding in him. When he hears all that has occurred through Christ Jesus he says, “John, whom I beheaded, has been restored to life!” Herod feels that, though the physical personality of John had gone away, he is now all the more present! He feels that his atmosphere, his spirituality — which was none other than the spirituality of Elijah, is still there. His tormented conscience causes him to be aware that John the Baptist, that is, Elijah, is still there.

~hag

But then something strange happens. We are shown how, after John the Baptist had met his physical death, Christ Jesus came to the very neighborhood where John had worked. I want you to take particular notice of a remarkable passage and not to skim over it lightly, for the words of the Gospels are not written for rhetorical effect, nor journalistically. Something very significant is said here. Jesus Christ appears among the throng of followers and disciples of John the Baptist, and this fact is expressed in a sentence to which we must give careful attention: “And as Jesus came out He saw a great crowd,” by which could be meant only the disciples of John, “and He had compassion on them …” (Mark 6:34.) Why compassion? Because they had lost their master, they were there without John, whose headless corpse we are told had been carried to his grave. But even more precisely is it said, “for they were like sheep who had lost their shepherd. And He began to teach them many things.” It cannot be indicated any more clearly how He teaches John’s disciples. He teaches them because the spirit of Elijah, which is at the same time the spirit of John the Baptist, is still active among them. Thus it is again indicated with dramatic power in these significant passages of the Mark Gospel how the spirit of Christ Jesus entered into what had been prepared by the spirit of Elijah-John. Even so this is only one of the main points, around which many other significant things are grouped.

I will now call your attention to one thing more. I have several times pointed out how this spirit of Elijah or John continued to act in such a way as to impress its impulses into world history. I have often mentioned that the soul of Elijah-John appeared again in the painter Raphael. This is one of those facts that call attention to the metamorphoses of souls that take place under the impetus given by the Mystery of Golgotha. Because it was also necessary that in the post-Christian era such a soul should work in Raphael through the medium of a single personality; what in ancient times was so comprehensive and world encompassing now appears in such a different personality as that of Raphael. Can we not feel that the aura that hovered round Elijah-John is also present in Raphael? That in Raphael there were such similarities to these two others that we could even say that this element was too great to be able to enter into a single personality but hovered round it, so that the revelations received by this personality seemed like an illumination? Such was indeed the case with Raphael!” ~Rudolf Steiner, Gospel of Mark: Lecture 3

Saturday 23 September 2023

Community Prep-Stir / Potluck / Bon-fire

*Autumnal Equinox

*Yom Kippur

*Michaelmas Festival

6 – 8 pm at the Lucchesi-Archer-Ginsberg domicile

Please Bring Food & Drink to share, & a jar for the prep

RSVP Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

30 September 2023 – Michaelmas Festival & Zinniker Farm Day

for more info.

Happy b-day Goethe

August 28, 2023Biography, Birth / Death Days, Celestial Event, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Upcoming Events~hag

In the reckoning of Spiritual Science, humanity is experiencing now in Our Present Age, a ‘recapitulation’ of Ancient Egypt. In that time Sirius was called the Star of Isis – the Sister/Lover/Resurrector of the Sun-god Osiris. On a spiritual-physical level, the body of Osiris was seen as Egypt itself. This was a precursor to the sacrifice of the Cosmic Christ who become the meaning & body of the whole Earth. In that time, the body of Osiris was like an overlay upon the land, dying, & returning to life each year with the flooding of the Nile, which occurred thru the rising of the Star of Isis – the rescuer & life-giver – ‘The soul of Egypt’. The annual appearance of Sirius just before dawn (starting at the Summer Solstice, in those days) heralded the Resurrection of the Nile, on which Egyptian agriculture depended. (And now the rising of Sirius happens 2 months later due to the precession of the equinoxes)

Temple inscriptions describe the star as the ‘Divine Sepat’, meaning the ‘Soul of Isis’.

And here’s an interesting Ah-Ha to roll around with: All these references in Sumerian & Egyptian texts before 500 AD, describe the star as ‘red -orange’ in color.

But dear friends, after that date, the references change – & Sirius is described as blue!

Today, we can look up into the dawn twilight & see that Sirius is the bluest & brightest most scintillating star in the sky.

It makes me think about how Steiner points out that in the ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer, the Iliad & the Odyssey, we read: ‘Wine-dark sea’ from oînos (οἶνος, “wine”) + óps (ὄψ, “eye; face”) oînops can also refer to oxen-blood, in describing a reddish color. Steiner tells that the human being of ancient Greece was not able to perceive the color blue!

There is a Hopi story that speaks about this shift in color; tying it to a change in epochs: “When the blue star Kachina makes its appearance in the heavens, the Fifth World will emerge.”

The ancient Shinto of Japan called Sirius ‘our second sun’ & aligned their Temples in its direction.

This gives me hope that we can continue to evolve in each epoch – so that in time & with intention, we will ALL be able to see what many cannot see today…Christ in the etheric…

Anthroposophy gives us a powerful imagination that describes how when physical matter was forming there was a lot of upheaval on earth, a picture involving the separation of Sun & Moon – no small thing – So most of humanity, still in our formative state, left the volatile earth & spent time in other planets or stars, until our karma brought us down, when the earth was more stable physically.

Well, maybe you have guessed since I speak so much with Sirius, that I resonate to that, & feel that Sirius is ‘My Star’.

What is YOUR Star?

~hag

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Today 28 August in 1749 – The Birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German author, poet, playwright, & diplomat. In 1888, as a result of his work for the Kürschner edition of Goethe’s works, Rudolf Steiner was invited to work as an editor at the Goethe archives in Weimar. As well as the introductions & commentaries to 4 volumes of Goethe’s scientific writings. Steiner wrote 2 books about Goethe’s philosophy: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World-Conception (1886), which Steiner regarded as the epistemological foundation & justification for his later work, & Goethe’s Conception of the World (1897). Steiner writes about Goethe in many places in his huge exegesis, including commentaries on his play Faust.

Goethe and the Evolution of Consciousness, by Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, August 19th, 1921

“…As a young man Goethe necessarily grew up in the outlook of his contemporaries and in the way in which they regarded the world and the affairs of human beings. But he really did not feel at home in this world of thought. There was something turbulent about the young Goethe, but it was a turbulence of a special kind. We need only look at the poems he composed in his youth and we shall find that there was always a kind of inner opposition to what his contemporaries were thinking about the world and about life.

But at the same time there is something else in Goethe — a kind of appeal to what lives in Nature, saying something more enduring and conveying much more than the opinions of those around him could convey. Goethe appeals to the revelations of Nature rather than to the revelations of the human mind. And this was the real temper of his soul even when he was still a child, when he was studying at Leipzig, Strassburg and Frankfurt, and for the first period of his life at Weimar.

Think of him as a child with all the religious convictions of his contemporaries around him. He himself relates — and I have often drawn attention to this beautiful episode in Goethe’s early life — how as a boy of seven he built an altar by taking a music-stand and laying upon it specimens of minerals from his father’s collection; how he placed a taper on the top, lighting it by using a burning-glass to catch the rays of the sun, in order, as he says later — for at seven years he would not, of course, have spoken in this way — to bring an offering to the great God of Nature.

We see him growing beyond what those around him have to say, coming into a closer union with Nature, in whose arms he first of all seeks refuge. Read the works written by Goethe in his youth and you will find that they reveal just this attitude of mind. Then a great longing to go to Italy seizes him and his whole outlook changes in a most remarkable way.

We shall never understand Goethe unless we bear in mind the overwhelming change that came upon him in Italy. In letters to friends at Weimar he speaks of the works of art which conjure up before his soul the whole way in which the Greeks worked. He says: “I suspect that the Greeks proceeded according to those laws by which Nature herself proceeds, and of which I am on the track.” — At last Goethe is satisfied with an environment, an artistic environment enfilled with ideas much closer to Nature than those around him in his youth. And we see how in the course of his Italian journey the idea of metamorphosis arises from this mood of soul, how in Italy Goethe begins to see the transformation of leaf into petal in such a way that the thought of metamorphosis in the whole of Nature flashes up within him.

It is only now that Goethe finds a world in which his soul really feels at home. And, if we study all that he produced after that time, both as a poet and a scientist, it is borne in upon us that he was now living in a world of thought not easily intelligible to his contemporaries, nor indeed to the man of to-day.

Those who embark upon a study of Goethe equipped with the modern scholarship acquired in every kind of educational institution from the Elementary School to the University, and with habitual thought and outlook, will never understand him. For an inner change of mental outlook is essential if we are to realise what Goethe really had in his mind when, in Italy, he re-wrote Iphigenia in Greek metre, after having first composed it in the mood of the Germanic North. Nor is it possible to understand Goethe’s whole attitude to Faust until we realise the fundamental nature of the change that had taken place.

After he had been to Italy, Goethe really hated the first version of Faust which he had written earlier. After that journey he would never have been able to write the passage where Faust turns away from the

“… heavenly forces rising and descending, Their golden urns reciprocally lending,” where he turns his back upon the macrocosm, crying: “Thou, Spirit of the Earth art nearer to me.”

…And many other passages can be read in the same sense. Take, for instance, that wonderful treatise written in the year 1790, on the Metamorphosis of the Plants (Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erkennen). We shall have to admit that before his journey to Italy Goethe could never have had at his command a language which seems to converse with the very growth and unfolding life of the plants. And this is an eloquent indication of the place of Goethe’s soul in the whole sweep of evolution. Goethe felt a stranger to the thought of his time the moment he was obliged inwardly to ‘digest’ the result of contemporary scientific education. He was always striving for a different kind of thinking, a different way of approaching the world, and he found it when he felt that he had brought to life within him the attitude of the Greeks to Nature, to the World, to Man…” ~Rudolf Steiner

430 – Deathday of Saint Augustine an early Christian theologian & philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western philosophy. Among his most important works are The City of God & Confessions. In his early years, he was heavily influenced by Manichaeism & afterward by the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus. He “established anew the ancient Faith.” After his conversion to Christianity in 387, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy & theology, believing that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom. He is the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, the alleviation of sore eyes.

632 – Deathday of Fatimah, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad

1189 – The Third or Kings’ Crusade, was an attempt to reconquer the Holy Land. The campaign was largely successful, regaining the important cities of Acre & Jaffa, but it failed to capture Jerusalem, the emotional & spiritual motivation of the Crusade. After the Crusaders had driven the Muslims from Acre, Richard the Lionheart finalized a treaty granting Muslim control over Jerusalem, but allowing unarmed Christian pilgrims & merchants to visit the city.

1833 – The Slavery Abolition Act through most of the British Empire

1850 – Wagner’s Lohengrin premieres at the German National Theatre, Weimar

Image result for The Carrington event, Solar Storm d Michael Delton

1859 – The Carrington event, Solar Storm disrupts electrical telegraph services & causes aurora to shine so brightly that they are seen clearly all over the earth’s middle latitudes.

1862 – American Civil War: Second Battle of Bull Run

1943 – World War II: In Denmark, a general strike against the Nazi occupation

1957 – U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, an ardent segregationist, begins a filibuster to prevent the Senate from voting on Civil Rights Act

Image result for 1963 – March on Washington

1963 – March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom: The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his I Have a Dream speech

1968 – Riots in Chicago, during the Democratic National Convention

1988 – Ramstein air show disaster: Seventy-five are killed & 346 injured

1990 – Iraq declares Kuwait to be its newest province

Saturday 23 September 2023

Community Prep-Stir / Potluck / Bon-fire

*Autumnal Equinox

*Yom Kippur

*Michaelmas Festival

6 – 8 pm at the Lucchesi-Archer-Ginsberg domicile

Please Bring Food & Drink to share, & a jar for the prep

RSVP Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

30 September 2023 – Michaelmas Festival & Zinniker Farm Day

for more info.

Anthem

August 27, 2023Biography, Calendar of the Soul, Speaking with the Stars, Upcoming Events~hag

POD (Poem Of the Day)

I feel the fire burning – my thoughts spark the flame
A voice calls out the question
Echoing my name
Hidden in dark chambers – a purpose dwells deep
Be patient to unveil Her
What is unlocked, will never sleep
Where is Love to pulse in tempo
Pain ringing the alarm: What you reap, this you sow
Then will the seed be watered, & then begin to grow
So crack the code to Freedom
From the heart a rhythmic flow
To let the Sun of Wisdom speak
A cosmic anthem we all know
~hag

~Chart via John Jardine Goss/ EarthSky.

27 August 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Earth flies between the sun and Saturn on placing the ringed planet opposite the sun – at opposition – in our sky. Saturn at opposition is in the dim constellation Aquarius the Water Bearer. In addition, if you have a dark sky, you can see the dim but pretty constellation Capricornus the Sea-goat. It has the shape of an arrowhead. Indeed, you can see them crossing the sky all night, traveling along the ecliptic, the same path the sun travels during the day. Also, the bright star Fomalhaut is nearby.

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated (with added titles) by Roy Sadler
At times I imagine the Calendar’s verse development as if it were a human biography, with each verse number having a meaning in itself.
The senses’ dream in early summer can resemble child experience, new gifts and beginnings in the second quarter teenage creative imagination, v20 is like a trial to become adult (Overcoming Lucifer) and now v21, the magic 3×7, offers the key to the door that opens life’s destiny in its mirror verse, 32: 4×8.
After 52 years can the 53rd birthday become a resurrection that ‘unites with light as one’ and proceeds through the years of verses with conscious destiny?

AUTUMN PRELUDE I
The Key To Selfhood’s Door
v21
I feel a strange new strengthening,
fruit-bearing power of becoming;
I sense the seed maturing
and on a starlit loom
a dawning vision weaving
the pathway to my real being.

ALL HALLOWTIDE III
The Gift Of Destiny
v32
I feel my own fruit-bearing power
present me to the world
and strengthen my innate intent
to turn towards the clarity
within life’s web of destiny

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

Saturday 23 September 2023

Community Prep-Stir / Potluck / Bon-fire

*Autumnal Equinox

*Yom Kippur

*Michaelmas Festival

6 – 8 pm at the Lucchesi-Archer-Ginsberg domicile

Please Bring Food & Drink to share, & a jar for the prep

RSVP Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

30 September 2023 – Michaelmas Festival & Zinniker Farm Day

for more info.

Cosmic Cognition Earth Activated

August 25, 202310:10, Biography, Birth / Death Days~hag

“The Cosmic Christ” by Ullrrich Javier Lemus

Today’s essay is inspired by Tom Mellett’s new motto: “I think about thinking; therefore, I am here now.”

Esoteric, or as I like to call it, Cosmic Christianity continues to be misunderstood, denied, maligned, & persecuted, these crazy hazy daze. Its disciples vilified as heretics, even in pre-Christian times, when the ancient Mystery Schools were prefiguring & preparing humanity for the incarnation of the Logos. These onslaughts fed partly by the necessity of the evolution of human consciousness, & also in part by the adversarial forces of jealousy – led to the burning of the Temple of Artemis; the ‘Arabianizing of Aristotelianism’; the systematic destruction of the ancient mysteries by the Roman empire; the abrogation of the Gnostics at the Council of Nicaea; the living spirit all but abolished when doubts of the Trinity arose, infiltrating the Catholic Church at the Ecumenical Council of 869; the obliteration of Celtic Christianity in Britain at the Council of Whitby in 664; the rising of the Academy of Gondishapur in 666; the genocide of the Albigensian Crusade; the arrest, torture & murder of the Knights Templar; the suppression of the Rosicrucian’s in the 17^th century; & the burning of the 1^st Goetheanum, the Johannes Bau – Temple of the Word – bringing on the early death of the great Christian Initiate Rudolf Steiner in the 20^th Century.

It is time now to innovate Cosmic Christianity. What has been inscribed into the Comic ethers must be retrieved & implemented here on Earth.

~Matilda Wentzell

The Consciousness Soul age of which we are tasked with unfolding, has to do with awakening the eternal cosmic core of our being – an activation of our human individuality – Our Higer “I” – to transform our various sheaths, especially the astral body, so that it can become an effective tool for reversing the retarding effects of the ‘Fall’.

The mission of modern Rosicrucianism ie. Spiritual Science – the Cognitive Ritual – the Science of Anthroposophia, is to foster the development of our human individuality in the physical world without losing the spiritual substance, which is our cosmic birthright – to find the spirit thru the senses…

All knowledge begins with the elaboration of thoughts about our perceptions. (We can call this Imaginative Cognition)

~Andre Masson

Goethe describes how life unfolds its being according to a rhythmical principle of expansion & contraction, thru a modulated interweaving between polarities.

Rudolf Steiner gives a descriptive account of human cognition avowing that intuitive thinking is central to any understanding of the Human being: “In thinking we take hold of a corner of the world process where we must be present if anything is to come about…” ~The Philosophy of Freedom

The material aspects of the brain must withdraw to make room for true thinking – which allows the activity of thinking to be impressed upon material substance.

The nervous system – the basis of human cognition – is composed of hardened matter that is less alive than say our tissues or our blood. But the life force – the etheric formative forces work into the liberated structure of the nervous system to form the substance of cognition – an imprint that opens the portal to the cosmic realms. This is the work that Vidar has come to foster in us, in concert with Michael.

~hag

In re-founding a new Cosmic Christianity – a modern Rosicrucianism, Steiner outlined a practical path of spiritual development that aims to regenerate the ‘thinking process into the living world.

Awakening the inner potential of human cognition, we find higher states of consciousness already present in a seed form within daily consciousness. The Festival Life helps us cultivate these seeds.

As we strive to consciously evolve & perfect our moral & cognitive facilities, the realities of the world of Life-Processes – the Etheric Realm – are made more directly available to us.

This gives us access to the ‘Grail Castle’ – & then lays a firm foundation for Anthroposophia – & the applied ‘Science of the Grail’ to manifest – the goal of which is to heal karma – as we co-create the Earth as a New Sun…

~hag

~Chart via John Jardine Goss/ EarthSky

25 August 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: the waxing gibbous moon stands in the constellation Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer, between the more well–known constellations Scorpius the Scorpion and Sagittarius the Archer…hmmm…

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” ~H.G. Wells

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

79 – Deathday of Pliny the Elder, Roman commander & philosopher – died while attempting to rescue a friend from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Stabiae that had just destroyed the cities of Pompeii & Herculaneum. The prevailing wind caused by the sixth & largest pyroclastic surge of the eruption overcame his ship

1270 – Deathday of Louis IX of France, the Crusader King, devoted to his people, founding hospitals, visiting the sick like his patron St. Francis, even caring for people with leprosy. Louis united France. Every day he invited 13 guests from among the poor to eat with him.

1530 – Birthday of Ivan the Terrible

1609 – Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers

1744 – Birthday of Johann Gottfried Herder, German poet, philosopher, friend of Goethe

1814 – The U.S. Library of Congress was destroyed by British forces

1867 – Deathday of Michael Faraday, English physicist & chemist, who contributed to the study of electromagnetism. Albert Einstein kept a picture of Faraday on his study wall, alongside pictures of Isaac Newton & James Clerk Physicist Ernest Rutherford stated, “When we consider the magnitude and extent of his discoveries and their influence on the progress of science and of industry, there is no honour too great to pay to the memory of Faraday, one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time”.

Friedrich Nietzsche | Biography, Books, & Facts | Britannica

1900 – Deathday of Friedrich Nietzsche. Rudolf Steiner mentioned that in a previous life he was a Franciscan monk. Steiner also wrote: Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom GA5. The enigmatic Friedrich Nietzsche was seen by Steiner, but was lying in a coma near death. Nietzsche’s philosophy receives a scholarly & critical treatment & is then related to Nietzsche, the man.

At one point in his life, Rudolf Steiner brought out an edition of some of Nietzsche’s writings. In seeing that Nietzsche’s ideas received a public exposure, Steiner was not identifying himself as one of Nietzsche’s disciples, but rather assuring philosophical readers that this important link in the spiritual development of occidental thought should not be ignored.

Here is Steiner’s Memorial Address The Personality of Friedrich Nietzsche

1914 – World War I: The library of the Catholic University of Leuven is deliberately destroyed by the German Army. Hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable volumes Gothic & Renaissance manuscripts are lost

1916 – The United States National Park Service is created

1933 – The Diexi earthquake strikes Sichuan, China & kills 9,000 people

1944 – World War II: Paris is liberated by the Allies

1948 – The House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing: “Confrontation Day” between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.

1950 – President Harry Truman orders the U.S. Army to seize control of the nation’s railroads to avert a strike

Threads Remain

August 24, 2023History, Poetry, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Speaking with the Stars, Upcoming Events~hag

~John Craig

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Some things always remain
True – Life
From death into life into
Boundlessness & restraint
Intuition & magic
Nature & nurture, the inner Earth & Sky…
The Sun rolls onward
The doors of heaven are open
Light returns to light
The great knowing descends – genius to genesis…
Will you meet me?
~hag

Today 24 August in 1912 was the 1^st performance of Rudolf Steiner’s 3^rd Mystery Drama: “The Guardian of the Threshold”

The Mystery Dramas strike a deep chord within, bringing notes of destiny Wisdom to sound within our individual life circumstances. They contain extremely concentrated karmic wisdom. A clue to the reason why, appears in the following writings of Rudolf Steiner about his Mystery Dramas:

‘And actually, one must understand that if some trouble were to be taken to read the things that lie within this drama—not reading between the lines, but if one were to take the trouble to read what lies in the words themselves spiritually—if one were to take the trouble to grasp the Rosicrucian Mystery in just such a way, seeking for these things in the next few years, then it would not be necessary for me to give so many lectures about this or that in the time to come.’

In relation to the Mystery Dramas, Hans Pusch, who worked deeply with them, states:

‘It is a clear sign of genuine relationship to Anthroposophy, if the forces of destiny become more and more active, even though they may be disturbing and uncomfortable. The spirit of our time is an awakener, a conscious troublemaker, and a dis-illusioner. Anyone who feels inner turmoil as a necessary tribute to the forces of progress will be prepared to enjoy the seemingly long speeches in the dramas. In their composition, he will sense inner laws and rhythms that will bring order to his own soul. The dramatic events in the spirit scenes become as real as any physical happenings.’

Our trials help us to understand & have compassion for one another. As Hans says, sometimes it is indeed a daily, almost hourly inner battle with our self to say ‘Yes’ to what destiny throws in our path.

As the scenes of the Mystery Dramas unfold, we become aware of the various interactions between individuals in the course of time.

In the lecture series ‘The Secrets of the Threshold’ Steiner speaks often of the Mystery Dramas. They give us an objective overview, ‘of knots from threads that karma spun in world becoming’ in the words of Benedictus. (in the Temple Scene of the first Mystery Drama.) In these threads, human lives are interwoven.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is mystery-drama-guardian-seal-1024x768.jpg

In the Temple Scenes of the Mystery Dramas, we experience the manifestation of karmic configurations & their progression in the spiritual development of individuals.

Within our present incarnation, there are deeds to perform to help rectify misdeeds, before we cross the threshold into the life between death & rebirth. We all have knots to loosen & unbind in our individual destiny. By recognizing the characters & situations in the plays, which are similar to our own life, unexpected karmic understandings may be glimpsed.

Full publicity shot of Reginald Owen as Ebenezer Scrooge, seated ...

We can think about the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, well known in Charles Dicken’s story, ‘A Christmas Carol’. Was it destiny that Scrooge was confronted by the ‘Ghost of Christmas Past’? How was his individual retrospect similar from those in the Mystery Dramas?

Dickens’ story is a Michaelic-kamaloca experience. Seeing the pain of the people he was hurting, Scrooge felt the need to make amends for his miserly misdeeds, thereby changing his future destiny & that of others, as well. This striving for atonement is to be developed at every turn on the wheel of the year. May we take stock of what we have reaped & sown as we move toward the harvest season.

In daily life, our trials along the path appear less objective to see & not so beautifully expressed as the poetry we find in The Mystery Dramas. It is, however, the suffering in destiny situations, which leads to soul-growth. Our present state of mind may hold clues to understanding past misdeeds. Likewise does heightened consciousness assist in planting seeds of service for the future of mankind.

~hag

from Hans Pusch – ‘Working together on Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery dramas

“The Guardian of the Threshold – Scene 10 – The Temple of the Mystic League. Here Benedictus, Torquatus, and Trustworthy have the robes and insignia of their office of Hierophant as described in the ‘Portal of Initiation.’ The Eastern altar supports a golden sphere; a blue sphere rests upon the Southern altar; while the sphere upon the altar of the West is red. As the scene opens Benedictus and Hilary are standing at the altar in the East; Bellicosus and Torquatus at the altar in the South; Trustworthy at the altar in the West; then enter Thomasius, Capesius, Strader then Maria, Felix Balde, and Dame Balde, and later on the Soul of Theodora; and last of all the four Soul-Forces. (East is stage right & West stage left.)

Benedictus:
The souls of all my pupils have received
The spirit-light, each in that special form
Which was appointed for him by his fate.
What they have now achieved each for himself
Each now must render fruitful for the other.
But this can only happen, if their powers
According unto number’s rhythmic law
Desire to join within the holy place
To form the higher unity, which first
Can waken to true life what otherwise
Could only stay in solitary state.
They stand upon the threshold of the shrine,
Whose souls must first unite, and then shall sound
In unison according to the rules
Imprinted in the cosmic book of fate:
That harmony of spirits may achieve
What each alone could never bring to pass.
‘Twill bring fresh inspiration to the old
Which here hath nobly reigned since Time was not.
To you, ye brethren, I these pupils bring
Who found their way here through the spirit-worlds
And through the strictest proving of their souls.
The holy customs will they treat with awe,
And treasure ancient sacred mystic ways
Which here are seen as powers of spirit-light.
Ye too, who have fulfilled in truest wise
Your lofty spirit-service for so long,
Henceforth will be entrusted with new tasks.
The cosmic plan loth call the sons of men
But for a time unto the sacred shrine,
And when in service they exhaust their strength
It guideth them to other fields of work.
Even this temple had to stand its trial;
And one man’s error had to guard it once,
The guardian of the light — from darkness deep,
One cosmic hour big with the fate of worlds.
Thomasius perceived through inward light
Which rules unconscious in the souls of men,
That o’er its threshold he must not pursue
His way unto the holy mystic shrine
Ere he had crossed that other threshold o’er,
Of which this only is the outward sign.
So of himself he shut the door again
Which you would fain have opened wide in love.
He now will as another come again
Worthy of your initiation’s gift.“

24 August 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: the 1st quarter Moon will pass in front of Antares (Alpha Scorpii), creating a lunar occultation visible from the Contiguous United States, Mexico and Canada.. The reddish star will disappear behind the dark limb (edge) of the Bella Lina & reemerge under her lit half.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

01A6AFEQ; Herculaneum is destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius — F Matania

79 – Mount Vesuvius erupts. The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum,& Stabiae are buried in volcanic ash

410 –Sack of Rome by The Visigoths

1185 – Sack of Thessalonica by the Normans.

1349 – Six thousand Jews are killed in Mainz after being blamed for the bubonic plague.

1391 – Jews are massacred in Palma de Mallorca

Amazon.com: Gutenberg Bible Na Page Of Johann GutenbergS 42-Line ...

1456 – The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed

1814 – British troops invade Washington, D.C. burning down the White House, the Capitol & many other buildings

1816 – The Treaty of St. Louis is signed by the Council of Three Fires (united tribes of Ottawa, Ojibwa, & Potawatomi) residing on the Illinois and Milwaukee rivers. By signing the treaty, they relinquished all right, claim, & title to their land, also a 20-mile strip that connected Chicago & Lake Michigan with the Illinois River. In exchange the tribes were to be paid $1,000 in merchandise over 12 years. Today, Indian Boundary Park in West Ridge, Chicago commemorates this Treaty.

File:The War of Wealth by C.T. Dazey, Broadway poster, 1895.jpg ...

1857 – The Panic of 1857 begins, setting off one of the most severe economic crises in United States history. Since the years immediately preceding the Panic were prosperous, many banks, had seized the opportunity to take risks with their investments & as soon as market prices began to fall, they quickly began to experience the effects of financial panic (will we ever learn?)

The Healing Power of Sunlight: Jakob Lorber: 9781885928108: Amazon ...

1864 – Deathday of Jakob Lorber “scribe of God” a Christian mystic &visionary. Lorber’s prose, an ‘inner voice’ from the region of his heart, has been compared with writings by other mystics such as Emanuel Swedenborg, Jakob Boehme & Rudolf Steiner

Documentary: The Story Of Thomas Alva Edison

1891 – Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera

1912 – 1^st performance of Rudolf Steiner’s 3^rd Mystery Drama: “The Guardian of the Threshold”

1932 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop (from Los Angeles to New Jersey)

1944 – World War II: Allied troops begin the attack on Paris

1954 – The Communist Control Act goes into effect, outlawing the American Communist Party

1967 – Led by Abbie Hoffman, the Youth International Party temporarily disrupts trading at the New York Stock Exchange by throwing dollar bills from the viewing gallery, causing trading to cease as brokers scramble to grab them

1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1991 – Ukraine declares itself independent from the Soviet Union