Category Archives: Biography

Hold Hands

Biography, Calendar of the Soul, Community, Festival, History, Rudolf Steiner Quote
Alex Gray

One wields the Sun-sword of right thinking
The other fashions the sheath of our soul,
To show us to ourselves.
Together they battle the hardening in our perceptions or
Our evasion into illusion…
One is light
The other is color
When they hold hands,
Spirit & Soul are One in Wisdoms Love
So we can be
Truly human.

Upright between Heaven & Earth,
Together with Michael & Anthroposophia
We carry the Christ-Light
Of Spirit thru Soul
Into the dark halls of matter.

Dear friends, I am honored to tread the ever winding way with all of you. Together we hold the center, ring the bell, & step into halleluiah!
~hag

Moon in Gemini: Two positions of moon on succeeding days with Castor, Pollux, and other labeled stars.

21 November 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”

DL Watson

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated (with added titles) by Roy Sadler
There are 4 Advent verses between the death verse, 33, and the Christmas verse, 38,
which (if not, as next year, on a Sunday) is in the same week as the last Advent Sunday;
so this first Advent verse is a prelude to next week’s first Advent Sunday.
ADVENT I
Old Treasure’s Mystery Felt
v34
Mysteriously to feel
with newly risen sense of who I am
old treasure re-enlivening within me
shall rouse a tide of cosmic forces
that pouring into my endeavour for the world
will in becoming print me into that which is.

The title for the August mirror verse is from Eloise Krivosheia

LAMMASTIDE III
Feel Gratitude For Everything
v19
Mysteriously to sheathe
my life’s new seed with memory
be now my striving’s further aim
that strengthening it shall awake
my own true force within me
and in becoming give me who I am.

 Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

 ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY – Wikipedia – Rudolf Steiner Archives –

164 BCE – Judas Maccabeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, restores the Temple in Jerusalem. This event is commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.

1676 – The Danish astronomer Ole Rømer presents the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.

1694 – Birthday of Voltaire, a French Enlightenment writer, historian, & philosopher famous for his wit, his criticism of Christianity, especially the Roman Catholic Church, as well as his advocacy of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile & prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, & historical & scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters & more than 2,000 books & pamphlets. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties, despite the risk this placed him in under the strict censorship laws of the time. He adopted the name Voltaire in 1718, following his incarceration at the Bastille. It is an anagram of AROVET LI, the Latinized spelling of his surname, Arouet, & the initial letters of le jeune (“the young”). According to a family tradition he was known as le petit volontaire (“determined little thing”) as a child, & he resurrected a variant of the name in his adult life. The name also reverses the syllables of Airvault, his family’s home town in the Poitou region. Voltaire perceived the French bourgeoisie to be too small and ineffective, the aristocracy to be parasitic and corrupt, the commoners as ignorant and superstitious, and the Church as a static and oppressive force useful only on occasion as a counterbalance to the rapacity of kings, although all too often, even more rapacious itself. Voltaire distrusted democracy, which he saw as propagating the idiocy of the masses. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma, & the French institutions of his day.

1783 – In Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier & François Laurent d’Arlandes, make the first untethered hot air balloon flight.

1789 – North Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution & is admitted as the 12th U.S. state.

1811 – Death day of Heinrich von Kleist, German poet & author, spoken about by Rudolf Steiner in THE INNER ASPECT OF THE MOON-EMBODIMENT OF THE EARTH. How can we fail to recognise that this man’s spirit in its entirety as he stands before us, is an actual living embodiment of that which dwells in the depths of the Soul, which we must trace back to something other than the life of earth if we wish to recognise it? Has not Heinrich Von Kleist described in the most significant manner what may live within a man (a description of which you will find at the very beginning of The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind), as something transcending him and driving him, and which he will only understand later on if he does not snap the threads of his life before! Think of his ‘Penthesilea’; how much more there is in her than she can span with her earthly consciousness! We should not be able to describe her at all, did we not take for granted that her Soul was immeasurably further advanced than the narrow little soul (although it was a great one) which she could span with her earthly consciousness. Hence a situation must arise which artistically introduces the whole process of the Drama. Indeed, it was necessary to prevent the whole transaction — which Kleist introduces with Achilles — from being grasped with the higher consciousness; otherwise the whole tragedy could not be perceived. Hence Achilles is called ‘her’ Achilles. What lies in the higher consciousness must be plunged into the non-conscious. Again, what part does this subconsciousness play in Katchen Von Heilbronn, especially in the remarkable relation between her and Wetter Von Strahl, which plays no part in the higher consciousness, but in the deeper strata of the Soul where dwells the forces of which man knows nothing, which pass from one to another. When we have this before us we can trace the spiritual nature of the world’s forces of gravity and attraction. For instance, in the scene where Katchen stands before her admirers, do we not feel what lives in the subconsciousness, and how it is related to what is outside in the world which has been dryly called the forces of our planet’s attractions? Yet only 100 years ago a truly penetrating and striving mind was not able to find his way into that subconsciousness. But it must be done to-day. And the tragedy of a Prince of Homburg strikes us in a very different way now. I should like to know how an abstract thinker, one who accounts for everything by reason alone, could account for a figure such as the Prince of Homburg, who carried out all his great deeds in a kind of dream-state, even those leading finally to victory. Kleist indicates very clearly that he could not possibly gain the victory by means of his higher consciousness, for as far as that was concerned he was not a particularly great man, for he whines and whimpers over everything he has to do. Only when by a special effort of the will, he brings up what dwells in the depths of his Soul, does he play the man.

1877 – Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound.

1905 – Albert Einstein’s paper that leads to the mass–energy equivalence formula, E = mc², is published in the journal Annalen der Physik.

1916 – Deathday of Franz Joseph I of Austria, spoken about by Steiner in The History and Actuality of Imperialism

The Emperor of Austria, who now belongs to the deposed royalty, before he was chased out carried around along with his other titles a most unusual one: Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slovenia, Galizia, Lodomeria, Illyia and so on. Among all these titles was also “King of Jerusalem!” The Austrian Emperor also carried, until he was no longer emperor, the title “King of Jerusalem.” It came from the crusades. It would be impossible to give a better example of meaninglessness than this. And such meaninglessness plays a much greater role than you imagine. It is a question of whether we can arise to a recognition of the present-day platitudes. It is made difficult because those who live in platitudes are the verbal representatives of the old concepts that stagger around in their brains imitating thoughts. But one can only achieve real thinking again when the inner soul-life is filled with substance and that can only come from knowledge of the spiritual world, of spiritual life. Only by being relieved by the spirit can one become a complete person, after having been constipated with platitudes. What I described yesterday as a feeling of shame will result in the call for the spirit. And the propagation of the spirit will only be possible if the spiritual/cultural sector is allowed to develop independently.

1927 – Columbine Mine massacre: Striking coal miners are attacked with machine guns by a detachment of state police dressed in civilian clothes.

‘Tuning to the Stars’: Eurythmy for the Holy Nights with Jan Ranck* –
Sacred Geometry, the Planets and the Zodiac
LIVE IN-PERSON 26-30 Dec. 2021 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4 pm – 5 pm
And at 7pm on 31 Dec. as part of our annual NYE Conscious Community Gathering (details above)
 
$100 for all 6 sessions, or $22 for each individual session.
Make your payment using PayPal
or QuickPay with Zelle to chase@rschicago.org  
(please indicate in the notes that it is for the Holy Nights Eurythmy)
Cash at the door, or send a check to:
Rudolf Steiner Branch
4249 North Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, IL 60618-2953
USA
 
For more info. Contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg 
 
* Jan Ranck – Born in the USA, Jan Ranck studied music and comparative arts at Indiana University in Bloomington. She accompanied the London Stage Group on their 1976 USA tour and went on to study eurythmy at the Eurythmeum in Dornach with Lea van der Pals, where she subsequently taught. In 1984 she joined the faculty of The London School of Eurythmy. She left there to complete her eurythmy therapy training in Stuttgart in 1989, moving afterward to Israel, where she founded and directed the Jerusalem Eurythmy Ensemble (1990) and the Jerusalem Academy of Eurythmy (1992) and was an instructor in the Jerusalem Waldorf Teacher Bachelor Program in David Yellin Academic College from 1999. Jan has held Master Classes at various venues worldwide, including the Goetheanum and the MA Program in Eurythmy held at Emerson College and Spring Valley. She is the representative for Israel in the International Eurythmy Therapy Forum.

Join us for our Annual NYE Conscious Community Gathering – The Theme for 2022 is Cabaret – a Cultural Sharing! All are invited to take the stage with an offering.

Circles Edge & other Waldorf alum will also perform

31 December Doors open at 6:30 pm – 4248 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago, IL. 60618

Please bring Festival Food & Drink to share

$20 goes to support the Rudolf Steiner Branch – the young People hosting & in The Band

7 – 8 pm – Eurythmy with Jan Ranck (separate fee $20)

8:30 pm – Circles Edge & Friends warm the stage & host the open mic

10:10 pm – Thought-Seed Circle

10:30 pm – Clean-up…;)

For more info. Contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg 

101010101010

Biography, Community, Poetry

10:10 Testament: A friend asked me if I choose the time 10:10 for our Thought-Seed Meditation because it represents the straight line & the curve – the basis of everything…? ‘Wow, I laughed – that never crossed my mind. I hadn’t thought of that – but I guess I didn’t need to since you have’. That’s the beauty of co-creation, we all add to the narrative; we all reveal what the collective spirit wanting to bring – each hearing what speaks to us; & then we can share with each other, so the Thought-Form grows between us.

Perhaps, she explained, that message came to her because she is homeschooling. In the Waldorf education the pedagogy is based on this straight & curved line expression which is seen everywhere in nature.

Another friend said it reminded him of the binary code of 1’s & 0’s…And how we are now writing a new code into the universe!

Yet another mentioned that we have 2 chances to shine together everyday 10:10 am & 10:10 pm, …And so it is…

Luis Markoya

As we shine out from the Earth, Divine Spiritual Beings take notice, we are seen. We become lightning rods for their protection & power. We become super charged catalysts for change. The light that we generate is eternal – the future flowing into the now.

Fred Janney, co-creator of the Prison Outreach Program of the ASA, a fiery John the Baptist figure, made his uprising across the Threshold around this time last year. Last night I felt his energy strongly with us in that light.

Then the thought came: What can we do to lay a foundation of truth, justice & beauty into the world – to co-create with the so-called dead – a health bearing, life affirming cradle for the new souls that must come in as Spiritual Warriors?

Andrew Gonzalez

What are your thoughts dear friends on our growing egregore – born 1 year ago…?

~hag

Star chart showing the Leonids' radiant in November 2021
astronomy,com

13 November 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: This month’s Leonid meteor shower peaks the 17th — which, unfortunately, closely coincides with the Full Moon (which will be partially eclipsed) That makes this week your best bet at spotting shower meteors. This morning offers several hours of darkness, as Bella Luna sets. The Leonids’ radiant near Adhafera in Leo the Lion is highest closer to sunrise, so try stepping outside a few hours before dawn to catch it at its best. It’s a great time to enjoy the early-morning autumn sky, which contains not only Leo but also Cancer, Orion, Gemini, Taurus and Perseus. There’s a plethora of familiar constellations and easy-to-find deep-sky beings including the Pleiades, the Crab Nebula, the Orion Nebula, and the Perseus Double Cluster.

Rejoyce Enright – AGE 10

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~with the day star i exist
by the midnight Sun i sail
above the sea a single star
wise in the darkness…
~hag

‘Tuning to the Stars’: Eurythmy for the Holy Nights with Jan Ranck* –
Sacred Geometry, the Planets and the Zodiac
LIVE IN-PERSON 26-30 Dec. 2021 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4 pm – 5 pm
And at 8pm on 31 Dec. as part of our annual NYE Conscious Community Gathering (details TBA)
 
$100 for all 6 sessions, or $22 for each individual session.
Make your payment using PayPal
or QuickPay with Zelle to chase@rschicago.org  
(please indicate in the notes that it is for the Holy Nights Eurythmy)
Cash at the door, or send a check to:
Rudolf Steiner Branch
4249 North Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, IL 60618-2953
USA
 
For more info. Contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg hag@RSchicago.org
 
* Jan Ranck – Born in the USA, Jan Ranck studied music and comparative arts at Indiana University in Bloomington. She accompanied the London Stage Group on their 1976 USA tour and went on to study eurythmy at the Eurythmeum in Dornach with Lea van der Pals, where she subsequently taught. In 1984 she joined the faculty of The London School of Eurythmy. She left there to complete her eurythmy therapy training in Stuttgart in 1989, moving afterward to Israel, where she founded and directed the Jerusalem Eurythmy Ensemble (1990) and the Jerusalem Academy of Eurythmy (1992) and was an instructor in the Jerusalem Waldorf Teacher Bachelor Program in David Yellin Academic College from 1999. Jan has held Master Classes at various venues worldwide, including the Goetheanum and the MA Program in Eurythmy held at Emerson College and Spring Valley. She is the representative for Israel in the International Eurythmy Therapy Forum.

Enhance

Autumn, Biography, Poetry, Quote, Speaking with the Stars
E Taylor

“When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before, and the first of what is still to come”. ~Leonardo da Vinci.

I stand with the swirling wind, a witness to the trees. Their dancing leaves a bright metamorphosis gifting the earth – enriching the soil. Can my thoughts join with their selfless giving? What can I do to make my life a gift to the future?

I will my thought to penetrate to the essence of spirit behind the fiery face of Nature’s dying. I am met by the souls of the dead. They too are working to enliven the earth – sending forces from the vast spiritual worlds.

As I walk, I am wrapped in the fertile scent of Autumn’s moldering. And my thoughts turn to the souls waiting to come down the rainbow bridge into a new life.

How can we cultivate our relationship to these unborn?  What will we create to enhance the destinies of our descendants? How can we live so that we preserve & augment the wonders of the world?

As we ponder our possible contributions – & take practical action to deepen our commitment to them – perhaps we can keep in mind this thought from Lewis Carroll: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward.”

~hag

12 November 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: This evening Bella Luna shines left of Jupiter and Saturn, forming a gentle curving arc with them.

Kendra Miller

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

 ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1793 – Jean Sylvain Bailly, the first Mayor of Paris, is guillotined during the Reign of Terror. Bailly was a French astronomer, mathematician, freemason, & political leader of the early part of the French Revolution.

1840 – Birthday of Auguste Rodin, French sculptor & illustrator, created The Thinker

1927 – Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.

1956 – In the midst of the Suez Crisis, or the Second Arab–Israeli War, Palestinian refugees are shot dead in Rafah by Israeli soldiers following the invasion of the Gaza Strip. The canal continued to be strategically important after the Second World War as a conduit for the shipment of oil. As a result of the conflict, the United Nations created the UNEF Peacekeepers to police the Egyptian–Israeli border, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned, Canadian Minister of External Affairs Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize, & the USSR may have been emboldened to invade Hungary.

1979 – Iran hostage crisis: One of the leading national issues during that year was the release of 52 Americans being held hostage in Iran since November 4, 1979.  In response to the hostage situation in Tehran, US President Jimmy Carter orders a halt to all petroleum imports into the United States from Iran. The Iran hostage crisis continued into 1980, & as the November 1980 presidential election approached, there were concerns in the Republican Party camp that a resolution of the crisis would give incumbent Jimmy Carter enough of an electoral boost to be re-elected.

Reagan won the election, because the hostages were not released before the election, but on the day of Reagan’s inauguration—in fact, 20 minutes after he concluded his inaugural address—the Islamic Republic of Iran announced the release of the hostages. The timing gave rise to an allegation that representatives of Reagan’s presidential campaign had conspired with Iran to delay the release until after the election to thwart President Carter from pulling off an “October surprise”.

According to the allegation, the Reagan Administration rewarded Iran for its participation in the plot by supplying Iran with weapons via Israel & by unblocking Iranian government monetary assets in US banks.

The House October Surprise Task Force outlined as “principal allegations” three supposed meetings between representatives of Reagan’s campaign & Iranian government officials in the summer & fall of 1980 to delay the release of the hostages: 1) a meeting in Madrid during the summer, 2) a meeting at the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C that autumn, & 3) a meeting in Paris in October.

The Task Force characterized three other meetings or contacts as “ancillary allegations”: 1) a meeting at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. in early spring 1980, 2) a meeting at the Churchill Hotel in London in the summer of 1980, and 3) a meeting at the Sherry Netherlands Hotel in New York in January 1981.

  • March 1980: Jamshid Hashimi, international arms dealer, is visited by William Casey at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel, who asks that a meeting be arranged with “someone in Iran who had authority to deal on the hostages”.
  • March 21, 1980: Jamshid Hashimi & his brother Cyrus Hashimi meet at the latter’s home.
  • April 1980: Donald Gregg, a U.S. National Security Council aide with connections to George Bush, meets Cyrus Hashimi in New York’s Shazam restaurant, near Hashimi’s bank.  Former Iranian President Abolhassan Banisadr said in his 1991 book My Turn to Speak that he had “proof of contacts between Khomeini & the supporters of Ronald Reagan as early as the spring of 1980…. Rafsanjani, Beheshti, & Ahmed Khomeini [the Ayatollah’s son] played key roles.”
  • Last week of July 1980: At a meeting in Madrid arranged by the Hashimi brothers that includes Robert Gray, a man identified as Donald Gregg, & Mahdi Karrubi, William Casey says that if Iran could assure that American hostages were well treated until their release & were released as a “gift” to the new administration, “the Republicans would be most grateful & ‘would give Iran its strength back.’” Karrubi says he has “no authority to make such a commitment.”
  • About August 12, 1980: Karrubi meets again with Casey, saying Khomeini has agreed to the proposal. Casey agrees the next day, naming Cyrus Hashimi as middleman to handle the arms transactions. More meetings are set for October. Cyrus Hashimi purchases a Greek ship & commences arms deliveries valued at $150 million from the Israeli port of Eilat to Bandar Abbas. According to CIA sources, Hashimi receives a $7 million commission. Casey is said to use an aide named Tom Carter in the negotiations.
  • September 22, 1980: Iraq invades Iran.
  • Late September 1980: An expatriate Iranian arms dealer named Hushang Lavi claims he met with Richard V. Allen, the Reagan campaign’s national security expert, Robert “Bud” McFarlane, & Lawrence Silberman, & discussed the possible exchange of F-4 parts for American hostages, but Lavi says they asserted they “were already in touch with the Iranians themselves”.
  • October 15–20: Meetings are held in Paris between emissaries of the Reagan/Bush campaign, with Mr. William Casey as “key participant”, & “high-level Iranian & Israeli representatives”.
  • October 21: Iran, for reasons not explained, abruptly shifts its position in secret negotiations with the Carter administration & disclaims “further interest in receiving military equipment”.
  • October 21–23: Israel secretly ships F-4 fighter-aircraft tires to Iran, in violation of the U.S. arms embargo, & Iran disperses the hostages to different locations.
  • January 20, 1981: Hostages are formally released into United States custody after spending 444 days in captivity. The release takes place just minutes after Ronald Reagan is sworn in as president.

Several individuals—most notably former Iranian President Abulhassan Banisadr, former naval intelligence officer and U.S. National Security Council member Gary Sick, & former Reagan/Bush campaign staffer & White House analyst Barbara Honegger—have continued to speak out about this truth, to no avail. ~Infogalactic

1996 – A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 & a Kazakh Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane collide in mid-air near New Delhi, killing 349. The deadliest mid-air collision to date.

1997 – Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

1999 –Düzce earthquake shakes northwestern Turkey. At least 1845 people were killed & almost 5,000 were injured.

2001 – In New York City, American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 en route to the Dominican Republic, crashes minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 on board & five on the ground.

2017 – The Kermanshah earthquake shakes the northern Iran–Iraq border. At least 2410 people were killed & over 7,000 were injured.

~Sharpening my pointy chin…
I go
Questing in the shadowland.
From my hands the horn of plenty flows freely
The ghosts are fed, the unborn, ready…
I remind them
The Earth is an apple
Ripening in space.
Blue starlight filters thru
The outstretched wings of a bird, like wind in the fire,
As our walk-about leads ever onward
In the unending rhythm of the light
Glowing in the dark…
~hag

‘Tuning to the Stars’: Eurythmy for the Holy Nights with Jan Ranck* –
Sacred Geometry, the Planets and the Zodiac
LIVE IN-PERSON 26-30 Dec. 2021 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4 pm – 5 pm
And at 8pm on 31 Dec. as part of our annual NYE Conscious Community Gathering (details TBA)
 
$100 for all 6 sessions, or $22 for each individual session.
Make your payment using PayPal
or QuickPay with Zelle to chase@rschicago.org  
(please indicate in the notes that it is for the Holy Nights Eurythmy)
Cash at the door, or send a check to:
Rudolf Steiner Branch
4249 North Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, IL 60618-2953
USA
 
For more info. Contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg hag@RSchicago.org
 
* Jan Ranck – Born in the USA, Jan Ranck studied music and comparative arts at Indiana University in Bloomington. She accompanied the London Stage Group on their 1976 USA tour and went on to study eurythmy at the Eurythmeum in Dornach with Lea van der Pals, where she subsequently taught. In 1984 she joined the faculty of The London School of Eurythmy. She left there to complete her eurythmy therapy training in Stuttgart in 1989, moving afterward to Israel, where she founded and directed the Jerusalem Eurythmy Ensemble (1990) and the Jerusalem Academy of Eurythmy (1992) and was an instructor in the Jerusalem Waldorf Teacher Bachelor Program in David Yellin Academic College from 1999. Jan has held Master Classes at various venues worldwide, including the Goetheanum and the MA Program in Eurythmy held at Emerson College and Spring Valley. She is the representative for Israel in the International Eurythmy Therapy Forum.

Time Thief

Biography, Calendar of the Soul, Rudolf Steiner Quote
Van Kache

Dear friends – Wow night school was a trip – I woke up from a dream about time thieves. A glimpse of the Asuras?…or perhaps it is connected to my vow to research how the ‘Daylight Saving Time’ phenomena effects our etheric body…

“We can grasp the nature of the Sun only when we know something of its nature of spirit and soul. In that realm it is the power which imbues with warmth the element of necessity in destiny, resolves destiny into freedom in its flame and, if freedom is misused, condenses it once more into its own active substance. The Sun is, as it were, the flame in which freedom becomes a luminous reality in the universe. And at the same time the Sun is the substance in which, as condensed ashes, misused freedom is moulded into destiny, until destiny itself can become luminous and pass over into the flames of freedom.” ~Rudolf Steiner, “Spiritual Individualities of the Planets”.

Karlyn Holman

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated (with added titles) by Roy Sadler
ALL HALLOWTIDE II
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.

This verse can be regarded as the last autumn verse
and its mirror the first one, with an unknown power
that can now become one’s own creativity for the world
as one’s soul turns towards the clarity of her destiny.

AUTUMN PRELUDE I
My Future’s Power
v21
I feel a strange new strengthening,
fruit-bearing power, maturing
with seed of who I am,
and on a starlit loom in me
a dawning vision weaving
my pathway to my real being.

11/9/21 – “Speaking with the Stars”

Carl Sagan Quote, Explained - YouTube

Happy birthday, Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996)

Faust descent to the Mothers

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

 ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is wheel-bio.jpg

In the Original Calendar of the Soul, Steiner speaks about today being when ‘Faust makes his descent to the Mothers’

1888 – Rudolf Steiner’s ‘Aquinas experience’ – after giving a lecture on ‘Goethe as father of a new aesthetics’ the Cistercian priest Wilhelm Neumann, Steiner’s friend made this remark: “The seeds of this lecture you gave today are to be found already in Thomas Aquinas”. This opened Steiner to his earlier incarnation.

1918 – The second German Empire ends – Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates after the German Revolution, & Germany is proclaimed a Republic.

1923 – Hitler’s attempted coup in Munich

9–10 November 1938 – Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, was a pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi Germany, carried out by SA paramilitary forces and German civilians. The German authorities looked on without intervening.  Jewish homes, hospitals, & schools were ransacked, as the attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers.  The rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria, & the Sudetenland, & over 7,000 Jewish businesses were either destroyed or damaged. Kristallnacht was followed by additional economic & political persecution of Jews, it is viewed by historians as part of Nazi Germany’s broader racial policy, & the beginning of the Final Solution & The Holocaust.

1989 –Fall of the Berlin Wall: East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to travel to West Berlin

‘Tuning to the Stars’: Eurythmy for the Holy Nights with Jan Ranck* –
Sacred Geometry, the Planets and the Zodiac
LIVE IN-PERSON 26-30 Dec. 2021 at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago 4 pm – 5 pm
And at 8pm on 31 Dec. as part of our annual NYE Conscious Community Gathering (details TBA)
 
$100 for all 6 sessions, or $22 for each individual session.
Make your payment using PayPal
or QuickPay with Zelle to chase@rschicago.org  
(please indicate in the notes that it is for the Holy Nights Eurythmy)
Cash at the door, or send a check to:
Rudolf Steiner Branch
4249 North Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, IL 60618-2953
USA
 
For more info. Contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
Hazel Archer-Ginsberg hag@RSchicago.org
 
* Jan Ranck – Born in the USA, Jan Ranck studied music and comparative arts at Indiana University in Bloomington. She accompanied the London Stage Group on their 1976 USA tour and went on to study eurythmy at the Eurythmeum in Dornach with Lea van der Pals, where she subsequently taught. In 1984 she joined the faculty of The London School of Eurythmy. She left there to complete her eurythmy therapy training in Stuttgart in 1989, moving afterward to Israel, where she founded and directed the Jerusalem Eurythmy Ensemble (1990) and the Jerusalem Academy of Eurythmy (1992) and was an instructor in the Jerusalem Waldorf Teacher Bachelor Program in David Yellin Academic College from 1999. Jan has held Master Classes at various venues worldwide, including the Goetheanum and the MA Program in Eurythmy held at Emerson College and Spring Valley. She is the representative for Israel in the International Eurythmy Therapy Forum.

at the fulcrum of the scales

Autumn, Biography, Celestial Event, History

“Evil does not stand opposite to Good, but opposite another Evil. Where do we find Good? We find it as the Golden Mean, the balance between the extremes of the two Adversaries. That is why the Archangel Micha’el is often represented with the scales in his hand. The formula of the Golden Mean … is the key to the mysteries of morality. We must be ‘served’ by Lucifer (Devil) – without the luciferic power, we should have no artistic gifts and no art – and we must also be ‘served’ by Ahriman (Satan), for we need material science and technology. But Man must stand in the middle, holding by the bridle, so to speak, the Beasts from the abysss in both directions. The problem of Evil, too, requires for it’s understanding a “trinitarian” approach.

The divine secret of the Three in One, once grasped in its significance, will solve all the riddles of existence, including that of Evil. What is the power that stands in the middle, and shows us the way between the Devil and Satan, between Lucifer and Ahriman? The phrase of the “Golden” Mean is itself worth its weight in gold: in the Middle is the Sun of the Spirit, the Golden Heart of the world, Christ Himself. And Micha’el is the Archangel of the Sun, and of Christ, because, as servant of the Golden Balance, he helps to overcome the Beasts.” ~Emil Bock,   “The Apocalypse of St John” 

Greetings Friends – This morning on the eve of ‘Daylight Saving Time’ in the twilight of a grey dawn, as I stand at the Great Inland Sea, I am greeted by a fine white mist, which spreads across the brown stubble stalks of wild grasses like a undulating blanket. The goddess Natura is resting; rocking in her dark womb the seeds of future growth. She rests also in our souls where we hold the seed of our future self.

What the forthcoming will bring seems covered by the darkening, yet if we dare to look into the dark, we see evidenced in the swirling mists a purposeful pulsing. In these longer nights our spiritual seeds seek to be nurtured, unbound, & cherished. Banking our inner light, we belong to ourselves; & when we consciously gestate this seed of Self in our busy lives, even if only for a few minutes every day, we can live with a deep knowing, that thru this dark season, & on into the future, which is shrouded in the darkness of time, we are becoming.

Helen Chamberlain

Everything changes. All life must fluctuate, like the scales of Libra, it cannot be fixed. Day & night, life & death, activity & quietness, the out-breath & the in-breath, are the swings of the pendulum, the rhythms which bear us thru the cycle of the year, & enable us to mature into our true being, when we cultivate the inner observer at the fulcrum of the scales. From this Christic mood we prepare the soil for the future fruits of soul to ripen.

~hag

6 November 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The young Moon returns – bringing her secrets from the underworld. Look for Bella Luna as a waxing crescent in the west after sunset. There you will find her in conversation with dazzling Venus (occult Mercury).

November evenings bring Venus (occult Mercury) Jupiter & Saturn following the ecliptic – the Sun’s path – across our sky, into view. ~earthsky

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

According to the Original Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner Today in the 4th Century Columba founded the spiritual center of Irish monks on Iona.

1860 – Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th President of the United States with only 40% of the popular vote, defeating John C. Breckinridge, John Bell, and Stephen A. Douglas in a four-way race.

William Centrey

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~The heart ripens like fruit…
Falling from the tree
it breaks open
to share its seeds…
Mingling with the earth, it rests,
& dreams, of being
sweet meat for the mouth of god
~hag