4 October 2016 – Astro-Weather: As twilight fades, the Moon is poised between Venus to its lower right & the Saturn-Antares pair to its left. Antares twinkles below Saturn.

Vega is the brightest star very high in the west at nightfall. Arcturus, equally bright, is getting low in the west-northwest. The brightest star in the vast expanse between them, about a third of the way from Arcturus back up toward Vega, is Alphecca, the crown jewel of Corona Borealis. Alphecca is a 17-day eclipsing binary, but its brightness dips are too slight for the eye to see reliably

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ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

“To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world.” Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

Feast Day of Crispus & Gaius, Martyrs baptized by St. Paul at Corinth, Greece. Crispin headed the local Jewish synagogue. Gaius served as St. Paul’s host & was praised by St. John. Before being martyred, Crispin served as the bishop of the Aegean Islands, & Gaius served as bishop of Thessalonica, Greece.

1 Corinthians 1:14 – I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius

Acts 10:48 – So he ordered that Crispus and Gaius be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to stay for a few days.

Acts 18:8 – Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his whole household believed in the Lord. And many of the Corinthians who heard the message believed and were baptized.

Romans 16:23 – Gaius, who has hosted me and all the church, sends you greetings. Erastus, the city treasurer, sends you greetings, as does our brother Quartus.

3 John 1:1 – The elder, To the beloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth

Lucas Cranach the Younger

1515 Birthday of Lucas Cranach the Younger, He is known for portraits & mythical scenes

The ecstasy of St. Teresa by Bernini

1582 – Deathday of Saint Teresa of Ávila, a prominent Spanish mystic, saint, Carmelite nun, theologian of contemplative life through mental prayer & author during the Counter Reformation.

Her books, which include her autobiography (The Life of Teresa of Jesus) & her seminal work El Castillo Interior (The Interior Castle), are an integral part of Spanish Renaissance literature as well as Christian mysticism & Christian meditation practices. She also wrote Camino de Perfección (The Way of Perfection).

Teresa of Avila was born in 1515. Her paternal grandfather, was a marrano (Jewish convert to Christianity) & was condemned by the Spanish Inquisition for allegedly returning to the Jewish faith. Her father, bought a knighthood & successfully assimilated into Christian society. Teresa’s mother, was especially keen to raise her daughter as a pious Christian. Teresa was fascinated by accounts of the lives of the saints, & ran away from home at age seven with her brother Rodrigo to find martyrdom among the Moors.

When Teresa was 14 her mother died; this resulted in Teresa becoming grief-stricken. This prompted her to embrace a deeper devotion to the Virgin Mary as her spiritual mother. Along with this good resolution, however, she also developed immoderate interests in reading popular fiction (consisting, at that time, mostly of medieval tales of knighthood) & caring for her own appearance. Teresa was sent for her education to the Augustinian nuns at Ávila.

In the monastery she suffered greatly from illness. Early in her sickness, she experienced periods of religious ecstasy through the use of the devotional book the Third Spiritual Alphabet. This work, consisted of directions for examinations of conscience & for spiritual self-concentration (known in mystical nomenclature as oratio recollectionis). She also employed other mystical ascetic works.

She claimed that during her illness she rose from the lowest stage, “recollection”, to the “devotions of silence” or even to the “devotions of ecstasy”, which was one of perfect union with God. During this final stage, she said she frequently experienced a rich “blessing of tears.”

The kernel of Teresa’s mystical thought throughout all her writings is the ascent of the soul in four stages (The Autobiography Chs. 10-22):

The 1st Devotion of Heart, is mental prayer of devout concentration or contemplation. It is the withdrawal of the soul from without & especially the devout observance of the passion of Christ & penitence

The 2nd Devotion of Peace, is where human will is surrendered to God. This is by virtue of a charismatic, supernatural state given by God, while the other faculties, such as memory, reason, & imagination, are not yet secure from worldly distraction. While a partial distraction is due to outer performances such as repetition of prayers & writing down spiritual things, yet the prevailing state is one of quietude

The 3rd Devotion of Union, is absorption in God. It is not only a supernatural but an essentially ecstatic state. Here there is also an absorption of the reason in God, & only the memory & imagination are left to roam. This state is characterized by a blissful peace, a sweet slumber of at least the higher soul faculties, or a conscious rapture in the love of God

The 4th Devotion of Ecstasy, is where the consciousness of being in the body disappears. Sense activity ceases; memory & imagination are also absorbed in God or intoxicated. Body & spirit are in the throes of a sweet, happy pain, alternating between a fearful fiery glow, a complete impotence & unconsciousness, & a spell of strangulation, sometimes by such an ecstatic flight that the body is literally lifted into space. This after half an hour is followed by a reactionary relaxation of a few hours in a swoon-like weakness, attended by a negation of all the faculties in the union with God. The subject awakens from this in tears; it is the climax of mystical experience, producing a trance. Indeed, she was said to have been observed levitating during Mass on more than one occasion.

Teresa is one of the foremost writers on mental prayer, & her position among writers on mystical theology is unique. In all her writings on this subject she deals with her personal experiences. Her deep insight & analytical gifts helped her to explain them clearly. Her definition was used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Contemplative prayer in my opinion is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us.” She used a metaphor of mystic prayer as watering a garden throughout her writings.

Around 1556, various friends suggested that her newfound knowledge was diabolical, not divine. She began to inflict various tortures & mortifications of the flesh upon herself. But her confessor, the Jesuit Saint Francis Borgia, reassured her of the divine inspiration of her thoughts. On St. Peter’s Day in 1559, Teresa became firmly convinced that Jesus Christ presented himself to her in bodily form, though invisible. These visions lasted almost uninterrupted for more than two years. In another vision, a seraph drove the fiery point of a golden lance repeatedly through her heart, causing an ineffable spiritual-bodily pain.

I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it…

This vision was the inspiration for one of Bernini’s most famous works, the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa at Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.

The memory of this episode served as an inspiration throughout the rest of her life, & motivated her lifelong imitation of the life & suffering of Jesus, epitomized in the motto usually associated with her: Lord, either let me suffer or let me die.

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

Compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

compassion on this world.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

~Teresa of Ávila

1582 – Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, & Spain, October 4 of this year is followed directly by October 15

1669 – Deathday of Rembrandt

1927 – Gutzon Borglum begins sculpting Mount Rushmore

1957 – Space Race: Launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth

1960 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 375, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, crashes after a bird strike on takeoff from Boston’s Logan International Airport, killing 62 people (out of 72 onboard).

1963 – Hurricane Flora kills 6,000 in Cuba & Haiti

1970 – Deathday of Janis Joplin

1992 – El Al Flight 1862: An El Al Boeing 747-258F crashes into two apartment buildings in Amsterdam, killing 43 including 39 on the ground

2001 – Siberia Airlines Flight 1812: A Sibir Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 crashes into the Black Sea after being struck by an errant Ukrainian S-200 missile. Seventy-eight people are killed

2004 – SpaceShipOne wins Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight, by being the first private craft to fly into space

2006 – Wikileaks is launched by Julian Assange

2010 – The Ajka plant accident in western Hungary releases 35 million cubic feet of liquid alumina sludge. Nine people are killed & 122 injured, & the Marcal & Danube rivers are severely contaminated

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My POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Now i call myself my own

Irradiating the night of Time & Space with an inborn gleam

While nature dreams, my soul is called, to stay awake

Suffusing Sun fire into the inundating dark

Do you recognize me…?

~hag

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Part 4, From the Michaelmas 30 September 2016 Lecture: Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning by ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg 

Spiritual Science tells us, that basically humanity takes in nature in three ways:

1) Via nutrition (that’s why paying attention to things like GMO’s & supporting bio-dynamics is so important)

2) air/light (the yogi’s knew the importance of breath-control, & Steiner talks about how in the future we will take in light as we do air)

& 3) Thru our senses (of course Spiritual Science gives us 12 senses, but without going into that here, I hope you get the gist)

The dragon can enter into our existence through what we take into ourselves in these 3 ways; in other words, our unconscious sense impressions can become food for the dragon.  He is super-sensibly in us as a constant developer of his own selfish purposes. So that now, as human beings we are in constant battle within ourselves. Do you ever feel like you are your own worst enemy?

The dragon in us requires our sense experiences to nourish him. He avidly eats up what enters us, unless, we can develop heart-thinking to consciously use our sense perceptions differently.

What do I mean by that? Let me give a couple crude examples:

On the one hand we have a normal materialistic dude who grumbles out of bed when the alarm goes off, wolfs down a pop-tart, road rages his way to the office, sits all day in a cubicle staring at a computer screen, comes home & watches TV. This guy is the dragon’s best friend; they cozy up on the couch eating junk food & fighting over the remote. You get the picture.

On the other hand say there’s a woman who wakes up to the sound of the birds every morning & lingers to contemplate what may have come from the night. She lovingly cooks a bio-dynamic breakfast, says a prayer & eats it with reverence. On her way to work, she always takes a moment to commune with the catalpa tree on the corner. At work she is helpful & has moral integrity. When she comes home maybe she putters around in the garden.

Now we can take that example even further- What if a person’s karma has led them to anthroposophy? Perhaps then, when she works in the garden, she tries consciously to connect with the spirit behind nature. To acknowledge the elemental beings: the Gnomes & Trolls of the earth-realm, while digging in the soil, asking: What are the worms telling me today? – Tuning into the Sylphs, the fairies of air – Listening to the wind? – Taking in the power of the Salamanders thru the fiery rays of the Sun, seeking to integrate its warmth into her blood, into her will? – Working with the spirits of water, the Undines, perhaps stirring the bio-dynamic preps, asking: Can I learn to be adaptable, like water, flowing, freezing, rising as steam…As teachers you are helping the children learn Imaginative cognition thru your stories of these realms.

Since the dragon is a super-sensible being in the sense world – it attracts the super-sensible elemental forces that live in nature, which are constantly streaming toward humanity in the form of sense perceptions. If we remain unconscious to what enters us thru our sense perceptions, we are constantly uniting them with the Dragon – allowing them, because of our unconsciousness, to perish with the Dragon in our lower nature, instead of releasing the elementals from their spell, through our heart-thinking.

Tomorrow I will have to give all the rest of this lecture in one bite, as I am leaving for the AGM early Thursday 6 Oct. in Spring Valley. I will not have internet, so my posts will resume on Monday 10 October.

Xox

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg 

3 October 2016 – Astro-Weather: A slender crescent Moon appears  above Venus in this evening’s sky. The pairing of the night sky’s two brightest objects set against the vivid colors of twilight will make a stunning scene

MOON TRINE NEPTUNE: This is a good time for collaboration and transcendent events. Best possible outcome is to enrich the soul.

MOON CONJUNCT VENUS: Take advantage of this beautiful moment, favorable circumstances, and good moods to advance your agenda.

MARS SQUARE JUPITER: Be ready to toot your own horn and get things going in order to pass the test! Attention to production, outreach, or installation processes is worthwhile.

~Astrological Forecast by Victoria Martin viccimartin@gmail.com

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

La Shanah Tovah

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year,  (רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה‎, literally “head of the year”) is the first of the High Holy Days or Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe), a two-day celebration that started last night & is believed to be the anniversary of the creation of Adam & Eve, & their first actions toward the realization of humanity’s role in the world. It weds seriousness with celebration & begins the 10 days of repentance that culminate in Yom Kippur.

The New Year focuses our attention on themes of judgment, repentance, memory & the divine presence in the world. At the same time, Rosh Hashanah invites us to celebrate birth & creation on many levels. The liturgy suggests that Rosh Hashanah commemorates the creation of the world. Family-oriented services often include a birthday cake for the world.

Customs include sounding the shofar (a hollowed-out ram’s horn) & eating symbolic foods such as apples dipped in honey to emphasize the sweetness of starting the cycle of seasons once again, & round challah to remind us of the cycles of life.

Lucas Cranach the Elder

508 BC – Deathday of Lucretia an ancient Roman woman whose fate played a vital role in the transition of Roman government from the Roman Kingdom to the Roman Republic. She committed suicide after being raped by an Etruscan king’s son was the immediate cause of the anti-monarchist rebellion that overthrew the monarchy. As a result of its sheer impact, the rape itself became a major theme in European art & literature

Deathay of Jarius. The record of the daughter of Jairus is a combination of miracles of Jesus in the Gospels (Mark 5:21–43, Matthew 9:18–26, Luke 8:40–56) The story immediately follows the exorcism at Gerasa. Jairus, a patron or ruler of a Galilee synagogue, had asked Jesus to heal his 12-year-old daughter. As they were traveling to Jairus’ house, a sick woman in the crowd touched Jesus’ cloak & was healed of her sickness. Jesus turned round to the woman & says: “Take heart, daughter,” your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”  Moments later, a messenger arrived with the news that Jairus’ daughter had died, & he was advised not to trouble Jesus any further. However, Jesus responded: Be not afraid, only believe. (Mark 5:36) Jesus continued to the house, where he informed all those present that the girl was not dead but asleep. He then went upstairs & restored the little girl to life. In Mark’s account, the Aramaic phrase “Talitha Koum” (transliterated into Greek as ταλιθα κουμ meaning, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”) is attributed to Jesus

Deathday of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, a Syrian Christian theologian & philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century, the author of the set of works commonly referred to as the Corpus Areopagiticum or Corpus Dionysiacum, portraying himself as the Athenian convert of Paul of Tarsus mentioned in Acts 17:34 (Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus) This attribution to the earliest decades of Christianity resulted in the work being given great authority in subsequent theological writing in both East & West. His works are mystical & show strong Neoplatonic influence. For example he uses Plotinus’ well-known analogy of a sculptor cutting away that which does not enhance the desired image.

In a letter addressed to Polycarp, pseudo-Dionysius asks “What have you to say about the solar eclipse which occurred when the Savior was put on the Cross? At the time the two of us were in Heliopolis and we both witnessed the extraordinary phenomenon of the moon hiding the sun at the time that was out of season for their coming together…. We saw the moon begin to hide the sun from the east, travel across to the other side of the sun, and return on its path so that the hiding and the restoration of the light did not take place in the same direction but rather in diametrically opposite directions.…” This is illustrated in an astronomical fresco in the main gallery of the Escorial Library, near Madrid, Spain, which shows Dionysius the Areopagite observing an eclipse at the time of Christ’s crucifixion.

Luke, 23-45 (It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over all the land until the ninth hour. 45The sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn down the middle) We can notice a quadrant & an astrolabe in the hands of the amazed men!

287 AD – Deathday of Saint Candidus. The Golden Legend states that he was a commander of the Theban Legion, which was composed of Christians from Upper Egypt. He opposed Maximian, who had ordered them to harass the local Christians in his name, stating that “we are your soldiers, but we are also servants of the true God. We cannot renounce Him who is our Creator and Master, and also yours even though you reject Him.” Candidus, along with St. Maurice, the other staff officers & 6,600 soldiers, were martyred at the Swiss town of Saint Maurice-en-Valais

1226 – Deathday of Francis of Assisi, Italian friar & saint. Based on a study of the life of Francis of Assisi, Rudolf Steiner shows how the development of morality is based on the belief in the Divine at the bottom of every human soul, on the boundless love that springs from this belief, and on the hope for each human soul that it can find its way back to the Divine. The Spiritual Foundation of Morality: Francis of Assisi and the Mission of Love see also Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz, Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy, Steiner says: Francis of Assisi was wholly the sentient soul of Jesus of Nazareth in Christianity in the Evolution of Mankind, Leading Individualities and Avatar-Beings. There are many other lectures where this great personality is mentioned.

1250 – Deathday of Gilbertus Anglicus. His major work, the Compendium Medicinae, written in Latin, running to seven books, is an attempt to provide a comprehensive encyclopedia of medical & surgical knowledge as it existed in his day. He quotes extensively from Roger of Palma, & acknowledges that his work is indebted to Greek physicians including Galen, Hippocrates & Theophilus Protospatharius, & Arab physicians such as Averroes & Avicenna.

1942 – Spaceflight: The first successful launch of a V-2 /A4-rocket from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde, Germany. It is the first man-made object to reach space.

1952 – The United Kingdom successfully tests a nuclear weapon to become the world’s third nuclear power.

1962 – Project Mercury: Sigma 7 is launched from Cape Canaveral, with astronaut Wally Schirra aboard, for a six-orbit, nine-hour flight.

1963 – A violent coup in Honduras pre-empts the October 13 election, ends a period of reform, & begins two decades of military rule.

1981 – The hunger strike by Provisional Irish Republican Army & Irish National Liberation Army prisoners at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland ends after 7months & 10 deaths.

1985 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis makes its maiden flight. (Mission STS-51-J)

1986 – TASCC, a superconducting cyclotron at the Chalk River Laboratories, is officially opened

1990 – German reunification: The German Democratic Republic ceases to exist & its territory becomes part of the Federal Republic of Germany. East German citizens became part of the European Community, which later became the European Union. Now celebrated as German Unity Day

1995 – O. J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson & Ronald Goldman

2008 – The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act is signed by President George W. Bush – commonly referred to as a bailout of the U.S. financial system, is a law enacted in response to the subprime mortgage crisis authorizing the United States Secretary of the Treasury to spend up to $700 billion to purchase distressed assets, especially mortgage-backed securities, & supply cash directly to banks

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My POD (Poem Of the Day)

~I looked within

& saw the dragon writhing

In rags of mortality

Spitting the cold fire of fear

Binding & Hardening…

& yet my blood was hot

Pulsing with scintillating sparks

Forged From the sword of the Archai…

Now my tongue flicks flames

Licking the fingers of gods

Knowing I am

Free

~hag

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Part 3, From the Michaelmas 30 September 2016 Lecture: Heart-Thinking: Michael Beckoning by ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg 

And so in striving to understand what Heart-Thinking is, I’d like to invite you to practice a little experiment. I will relate a picture Steiner gave, & you can work to use your ‘soul’s imaginative power’ to try & ‘see’ it.

Steiner gives an imagination of the dragon writhing around the animalistic part of humanity. Perhaps you can feel it there in the lower chakras, even coiling around the heart in some folks. But then – also, behind us, at the back of the head, – picture the cosmic figure of Michael, towering, radiant, retaining his cosmic nature but reflecting it in our higher human nature, so that our etheric body, that part of us that holds our formative, life forces, reflects etherically the cosmic figure of Michael. Can you feel it there in your back space? Then, Steiner says, there becomes visible in the human head, a kind of protective helmet, whose power pours down the spine, into the heart, causing blood to flow down from the heart to the limbs –  moving the power of Michael in a leminscate, from head to heart to limbs, so we can put our will into action.

This is important because a big part in how we conquer the dragon is being able to recognize it. So with our Heart-thinking we can wake up to this & say: Ok, yes, the power of the Dragon is working within me, I might not see it – but I can feel it as a force that wants to drag me down below my true self. But in the spirit I also ‘see’ the luminous Angel whose cosmic task has always been the vanquishing of the Dragon.

I concentrate my Gemüt upon this glowing figure, I let its light stream into my heart-thinking so that my illumined & warmed soul forces can bear within it the strength of Michael. And out of a free resolution I will be able, through my alliance with Michael, to conquer the Dragon’s might in my own lower nature.

So…How did you do with our little experiment?

Some folks find it easy to work with imaginative pictures & some folks are more comfortable working with the intellect. We all, thru our individual temperaments & karma, tend to relate either to the head or the heart. (The 2 streams: Platonic & Aristotelian ) Of course our work is to bring them into balance, (The Shepherds must become Kings & the Kings-Shepherds) but since we began with the imagination, let’s work from the other side of the coin to formulate a more intellectual approach to understanding Heart-Thinking.

Tomorrow we begin there

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg 

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Saturday 15 October 2016 Opening (Closing event 12 November  2016)

Calaj.com Artists Matthew Schaefer and Janet Trierweiler Schaefer present:

“Silent Lecture” Art Exhibit & Discussion 

1pm – 4pm Paintings on view (in the un-rented space next to the Branch)

2:30 Artist Discussion – topics may include:

                         Setting limits to hold the limitless.      

                         Human systems at work.

                         The fallible element, how it works in art.

                         The steps or ritual.

                         The visible/invisible origin.

                         Finding the spiritual in art through a primitive gesture.

                         A cognitive transformation, instinct to intuition.

Snacks to Share Encouraged

For more info. Contact  Hazel Archer Ginsberg