Can you hear the Voice of Conscience?

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

Tobias Domingos_SequeiraDomingos Sequeira

175 BC – Tobias accompanied by the Archangel Raphael

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1886 – A fire devastates much of Vancouver, British Columbia

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

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

~   ~  ~

lightningfirestarter

~I am cloaked in light

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

My heart bares scars to prove I’ve lived

I’ve learned

The story of my existence as I live it

As it is spoken from the mouths of gods…

I lift my face to eternity

And am blessed by the kiss of Day

~   ~   ~

St. John's RS GA 229 Plate V

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

Can you hear the voice of conscience?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tomorrow we meet Demeter

Until soon

Blessings and Peace ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

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