Category Archives: Calendar of the Soul

the Sting of Advent

November 28, 2021Biography, Calendar of the Soul, Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Community, Festival, History, Insight, Quote~hag

Greetings friends on this 1st Sunday of Advent – I slept-in this morning, allowing myself to stay in that hypnogogic space with 1 foot in the spiritual world & 1 foot out – conscious that I was making a vow to my angel to enter deeply into this Advent season. I felt the presence of Rev. Richard Dancey, who years ago was Joseph to my Mary in the Oberufer Plays. I remember researching that tradition & discovering how the whole village would enter into a kind of sacrificial fasting in preparation for holding the essence of those divine archetypes. I have decided in lieu of my recent misstep that led to my foot turning into a big black & blue balloon, that I need to stop & take stock – to let go of all the vices that I have let creep into my habit life.

Interesting to note that during the 4 weeks of Advent the Sun is passing through the stars of Scorpio. The term “advent” – is Latin for ‘that which is coming’. So this is the time of preparation, of waiting in the dark, for the return of the light, at Winter Solstice, & it is deeply connected with the challenge of the Scorpion. – Can we overcome the consequences of error & evil that has separated us from our true divine nature? Advent can be seen as the time of transforming the fallen parts of our souls, so we can truly meet the Christmas birth.

In the northern hemisphere the darkness & death of nature mirror the descent of humanity from the light into the darkness of matter at the Fall. This time of Advent, reflects our journey away from the Divine Sun into the lower realm as represented by Scorpio. This descent began during the epoch of evolution known as ‘Ancient Moon’ – in the course of the rebellion called the ‘War in Heaven’ with the later infusion of Luciferic tendencies upon the human astral body.

“But now an event occurred that gave evolution a new turn. Beings who had a certain leading connection with that part of the Moon cosmos…became “rebellious”. This Moon rebellion changed the character of the human beings. They now had a soul body, as we said. They were thereby able to have inner sensations, emotions, etc., but now introduced into their inner nature was the impulse to develop a dim sense of independence, of segregation and of divorce from the higher spiritual world. These impulses prepared them to later become egoists. Those beings who initiated this development were later on perceived as the Serpent who brought about the Fall of humanity and the loss of paradise, according to the Book of Genesis. We find that Moon rebellion recorded in the script of the constellation of Scorpion.” (Willi Sucher, Isis Sophia II, Part Two, The Evolution of Ancient Moon)

Rudolf Steiner also describes this rebellion in Occult Science: An Outline & from another perspective in, The Spiritual Hierarchies and their Reflection in the Physical World: “Beings from the sphere of the Mights (Dynamis), to put it tritely, were detached; they were placed in the course of evolution so as to bring about obstacles instead of acting as progressive influences. We have come to know this as the War in Heaven….[later in Lemurian times]..The beings who stayed behind, whom we call Luciferic beings approached the human astral body –they were unable to reach the “I” – and injected into the astral body the results of the War in Heaven…humans now had been given the possibility of error and evil, but at the same time also received the capacity to rise above error and evil through their own strength…Thus we can see that only because the Dynamis were given adverse orders did humans receive the possibility of reaching their goal by means of their own powers, something that even the Seraphim cannot attain through their own endeavors. That is the crucial fact…Humans have to fulfill a completely new mission in the world, the mission we have just characterized, and descended into the earthly world in order to accomplish it. Christ came into the world as man’s free helper; not as a God working from above, but as the first-born among many.”

Advent is that time of the year to come to terms with the consequences of the error & evil that is in our own astral nature, reflected in our society so strongly today, as well as doing the work to develop the strength to overcome these tendencies in our self & in the world, so that we might prepare the way for the birth of Christ in us at Christmas-tide. This is our activity now for every human being during Advent. It is in this confrontation & transformation of evil in our lives, in our time, that we can begin to renovate the stars of Scorpion, to offer back to the divine what has fallen away, out of freedom.

Advent is a true festival of our current time in world evolution. This is a karmic call to humanity to awaken to this path of spiritual development with its focus on the confrontation with evil in our time.

The transformation of the Scorpion, not this time into the eagle, but into the dove, this must be our work – Opening to the Christ flame, the true I Am, born anew in the chalice of the heart at Christmas.

This ‘missing of the mark’ that led to my injury on Thanksgiving day has forced me to take a break from many outer activities. I am working hard to connect inwardly to the love, conscience & intelligence of my higher self, listening deeply to what is coming up in my thoughts & feelings. I offer them up as questions, as hopes, for transformation, for healing, for redemption of my lower self. It’s hard to sit still, to wait, to be observant, to be malleable & open to change. I have already received many not so pleasant insights into parts of myself that need purification, terrifying, or shameful glimpses into my double. Sometimes coming from very unexpected sources, blunt synchronicities, uncanny dreams & visions.

The Christian Community homily for this week speaks of this turbulent time: 1st Advent – Luke 21:25-36

“And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars; and upon the earth, the nations will be constricted with anxiety and doubt with the advent of these spiritual revelations, as before a roaring sea and waves. And men will lose their inner strength of soul out of fear and foreboding of what is coming over the living earth: for the dynamic powers of heaven will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud, in the sphere of life, with dynamic power and great radiant glory.

And when these things begin to happen, stand upright and lift up [raise] your soul to the spirit, for your deliverance draws near.

And he gave them a comparison, saying, ‘Observe [behold] the fig-tree and all the trees when they burst into leaf. Seeing this, you know yourselves that summer is near. So also when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near.

Amen, the truth I say to you: this present age of Man’s being shall not pass away until all has happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.Guard yourselves lest the perceptive power of your hearts be smothered by an excess of food and drink and by over-concern with the cares and worries of life, and the light of these spirit events break upon you suddenly like a snare…for it will come upon all who dwell upon the face of the whole earth. So be awake in the spirit at all times, praying, so that you may have the strength to live through all these things that are about to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man”.

We celebrate Advent to awaken our connection with the cosmic purpose in the Universe. Can we use this time to become more aware of the way in which we are disconnected from our source? Can we strive to awaken our purpose, as we work to remember our Divine origin?

I think of the Mother God gestating the emergent body of Jesus within her. Every breath she takes, every beat of her heart, every thought in her mind, devoted to forming the perfect human being capable of holding the divine.

I think of the approaching soul of Jesus, the pure, innocent Nathan soul, described in Luke’s Gospel, preparing to enter into this immaculate body – This soul which has never incarnated into a human being before.

I can’t help comparing that original purity & dignity of humanity with the way people treat each other now-a-days – so much derision, disrespect & hatred, all the discrimination, how can these lies appear to so many as truth, a delusion that they are willing to enslave others for?

Then I try to think about how this is part of some great plan to wake us up, to divide the wheat from the chaff, so that we can reclaim our place in the universe as conscious, Christened human beings.

With Prayers for Peace & Healing-
I Am ~hag

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

First Advent Sunday today. Perhaps last week’s mystery verse
of the re-enlivening of old treasure could have been called Advent Prelude.
Now… can it find itself anew in the soul’s creative impulse?
ADVENT I
Can True Being Inspire Me?
v35
Can I true being know
that it may find itself anew
within my soul’s creative urge?
I feel a power trusting me
to make my Self with modesty
a member of the Cosmic Self.

This verse and its mirror are the only question verses.

LAMMASTIDE II
Can I Imagine Spiritual Need?
v18
Can I make wide my soul
that she unite with seed
of Cosmic Word conceived?
I feel my foresight asking me
to find the strangth my soul will need
to form her spirit garment worthily.

Holiday Market at the Rudolf Steiner Branch
4249 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago
18 December 2021 – from 11 am – 4 pm

Handcrafted gifts, décor & toys
Featuring Live Music, Puppetry & Candle Dipping!!!

If you would like to be a vendor contact Elizabeth Kelly
eilisaineariadne@gmail.com

Dear friends – Please Join Us as move toward the Winter Festival Season:

Thursday 23 December 2021 – The Eve of the Eve –
11 am PT / 12 pm MT / 1 pm CT / 2 pm ET / 7 pm UTC

A Christmas Festival with Heart-Opening Movement by Lucien Dante Lazar
& a talk by our Christian Community Priest Rev. Jeana Lee

‘Divine Love and the Holy Child Within’

This will be a hybrid in-person & Zoom event
Featuring our 2 camera technology with Mary Spalding

Doors open at 12:30 pm (Zoom Room open 12:45 pm for Social time)
Snacks to Share Encouraged

Suggested donation $15.00
cash payment at the door or via the Rudolf Steiner Branch PayPal donation site –
*Please make a note on the first line – type in: “Christmas Fest”!
The Festival will be recorded

Time: Dec 23, 2021 01:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7052931041?pwd=Vk1XcDJqT0lKeHYzWXZJNlRYNlRvZz09
Meeting ID: 705 293 1041
Passcode: Christmas

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

The Epic of Gilgamesh
Storytelling during the Holy Nights 2021-2022
Hosted by the Anthroposophical Society in America

”The purpose of a story is to be an ax that breaks up the ice within us.”
~ Franz Kafka

Click to Register!

All around the world the season of midwinter is the traditional time for community bonding through storytelling. In laying the groundwork for the 100-year anniversary of the Christmas Conference, we bring the ancient Sumerian saga “The Epic of Gilgamesh” to life. Rudolf Steiner explored this story in Occult History during the Holy Nights of 1910; and again with the lectures “World History in the Light of Anthroposophy” given during those fateful Holy Nights in 1923 for the re-founding of the Society.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is perhaps the oldest written tale on Earth. The Sumerian version dates from around 3000 B.C. Later it was compiled from 12 clay tablets written in Akkadian cuneiform.

It is the “Hero’s Journey” of human evolution, a story of friendship, and a quest for the meaning of life – revealing Steiner’s core mission of bringing karma and reincarnation to the west.

Myths, fairytales, historical epics, and sagas open us up to powerful archetypes behind the human condition, revealing clues to ourselves – from the past, the present, and the future. What will we uncover about ourselves and each other during this year’s Holy Nights adventure in storytelling?

Tune in for any or all of the episodes of this dramatic reading, re-worked by Hazel Archer from various translations, and featuring friends from around the world.

What: The Epic of Gilgamesh: Story Telling during the Holy Nights hosted by the ASA, Hazel Archer, and friends.

Time: 22 minutes daily at 9 am PT / 10 am MT / 11 am CT / 12 pm ET / 5 pm UTC

Dates: December 24, 2021- January 5, 2022 for 13 consecutive days
Can’t join us live? No problem. Each gathering will be recorded and posted on our Holy Nights page (link will be emailed upon registration).

How: Register Here! Then check your email for confirmation with the Zoom registration link.

Cost: This event is free with suggested donations of $25, $50, $100
Your donations help us create events like this one!
Register Here!
www.anthroposophy.org/holynights

Eurythmy for the Holy Nights with Jan Ranck
‘Tuning to the Stars’:
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 Gathering (details below)

$100 for all 6 sessions, or $22 for each individual session.

Make your payment using the Rudolf Steiner Branch 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.

Friday 31 December 2021
Doors open at 6:30 pm

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

Please bring Festival Food & Drink to share

$20 Cash at the door or Make your payment using the Rudolf Steiner Branch PayPal or QuickPay with Zelle to chase@rschicago.org
(Please indicate in the notes that it is for the “NYE”)

All proceeds go to support the Rudolf Steiner Branch – the young People hosting & The Band (Can’t make it? Send a $ gift PayPal)

7 – 8 pm – Eurythmy with Jan Ranck (separate fee $22 see above)

8 pm – Potluck Social

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

Tuesday 4 January 2022 – (Zoom Details TBA)
11 am PT / 12 pm MT / 1 pm CT / 2 pm ET / 7 pm UTC

a talk with Christian Community Priest & Lenker for North America
Rev. Craig Wiggins: ‘From Bethlehem to Golgotha: Birthing the Christ within at Epiphany’

Hold Hands

November 21, 2021Biography, Calendar of the Soul, Community, Festival, History, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

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”

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

Time Thief

November 9, 2021Biography, Calendar of the Soul, Rudolf Steiner Quote~hag

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”.

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”

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

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

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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.

Pierce thru the Veil

November 7, 2021Autumn, Calendar of the Soul, Community, Festival, History~hag

“It has been said that we are the ones who forge the sword of Michael. However, there is something more to it. It has to do with the reality in the hidden world that, what needs to be prepared as the sword of Michael needs to be carried out on an altar, which cannot be seen externally. This altar is located under the Earth, underground, really. The understanding of nature powers leads to the understanding that the sword of Michael needs to be forged on an altar which is underground. There it needs to be found by receptive souls. The main thing is that you contribute by helping so that more and more souls find the sword of Michael. And it is not enough that it is forged. The task is only completed when the sword is found...”~Rudolf Steiner (GA 217A The Task of Enlightenment of Youth, Address in Koberwitz, June 17, 1924)

Altarpiece, Group X Painting by Hilma af Klint

Our modern Grail Quest demands that we develop heart-thinking to unlock the secrets of the elemental forces – allowing us to forge the Earth into an altar. Our spiritual work is to find our delicate organ of human conscience, ‘piercing through the veil’ like Parzival, to find & consecrate the sword of benediction – cutting thru the wastelands to heal the wounded Fischer King within.

The quest is always a question. Can we stand & remain steadfast on our journey – unfolding our higher ego-forces in the midst of a cynical one-sided intellectual culture that remains present in ourselves & in our companions on this spiritual journey—a continual giving & receiving of the sword which wounds as well as blesses?

The path that Parzival opened for us will never be achieved by adhering to outer authorities. The Parzival in us blazes a unique path through trial & error, an ever questing for the development of our individual ego forces. The point of the quest is to tear down the old paradigms to discover our own inner authority & follow that path even into the darkness of the underworld, where will we take up the sword as Michaelic warriors, for Freedom & Love.

~hag

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

680 – The 6th Ecumenical Council commences in Constantinople

1492 – The Ensisheim meteorite, the oldest meteorite with a known date of impact, strikes the Earth around noon in a wheat field outside the village of Ensisheim, Alsace, France

1665 – The London Gazette, the oldest surviving journal, is first published

1775 – Goethe arrives in Weimar

1775 – John Murray, the Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia, starts the first mass emancipation of slaves in North America by issuing Lord Dunmore’s Offer of Emancipation, which offers freedom to slaves who abandoned their colonial masters to fight with Murray and the British

1837 – Death-day of Elijah Parish Lovejoy an American Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper editor & abolitionist. He was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois.

1867 – Birthday of Marie Curie, Polish chemist & physicist, Nobel Prize laureate winner

1870- Papal Infallibility is proclaimed by Pius IX

1879 – Birthday of Leon Trotsky, Russian theorist & politician, founded the Red Army. Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks just before the 1917 October Revolution, immediately becoming a leader within the Communist Party. He would go on to become one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution

1893 – Women in the U.S. state of Colorado are granted the right to vote, the second state to do so

1913 – Birthday of Albert Camus, a French philosopher, author, & journalist. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay The Rebel that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957

1922 – The Order of the Freemason’s official ‘condemnation’ of Rudolf Steiner

1944 – Franklin D. Roosevelt elected for a record fourth term as President of the United States of America

1962 – Death-day of Eleanor Roosevelt, American humanitarian 39th First Lady of the United States

‘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.

Hallows All

October 31, 2021Autumn, Calendar of the Soul, Festival, History~hag

I have started back making the podcasts on ‘I Think Speech‘

And here are a few recordings with an All Souls Theme: for the ASA with Laura Scapattici & The Connection Between Epidemics, the Souls of the Dead, & the Spiritual World & Our CRC All Souls

For a whole collection of recordings go here

On this All Hallows Eve, do you have the courage to look beyond the mask of the material world, into the spirit realm, the place of our beginning, the time of our unborness, the abode of our ending, when we shuffle off this mortal coil, only to begin again & yet again, as we strive toward the eternal…?

Take heart my friends, for every ending is a new beginning. At All Hallows–tide we stand at the Cross Quarter between Autumn Equinox & Winter Solstice, a time when great transformations are possible. Since with the veils between the worlds so thin, the power of all the worlds are available to us.

What is it like to bring awareness to this most important human initiation, this true rite-of-passage? Can we work to consciously “Cross the Threshold”, as we do in meditation, in sleep & ultimately in our life between death & rebirth..?

As far back as ancient Persia, Mesopotamia & Sumeria, we find many initiation myths like the Epic of Gilgamesh, & the Descent of Inanna, that describe communicating with the dead & a journey to the underworld.

In Ancient Egypt we find: The Book of the Dead = ‘Book of Coming Forth by Day’ also called the ‘Book of Emerging Forth into the Light’; an ancient Egyptian funeral text illustrated with vignettes depicting the deceased & their journey in the afterlife. It was placed in the coffin or burial chamber. The Book consists of a number of magic spells intended to assist a dead person’s journey through the Duat, or underworld, & into the afterlife. It was written by many priests over a period of over a 1000 years.

Perhaps since in our time now we are recapitulating this epoch we might gain insight by looking into this text with modern eyes.

From ancient Greece we have the story of Demeter & Persephone, as Queen of the Underworld, connected to the secret festival of Thesmophoria, celebrated exclusively by the women. They dressed in white robes & observed strict chastity before & after the ceremony. According to Greek mythology, Demeter’s daughter, Persephone, was gathering flowers one autumn day when she was taken by Pluto, god of the underworld, to his subterranean kingdom. This was re-enacted as an initiation rite of death & resurrection. The 2nd night the women fasted & lowered wild boar, sacred to the goddess Circe & Hecate, into chasms in the earth as a sacrifice.

On the 3rd night the bones from former festivals were placed on altars & mixed with seed corn, which was then sown in the fields as a kind of magical fertilizer to ensure a good crop. Then they had a big feast. They would also cast herbs on their beds & sit on the ground to promote the fertility of the corn.

Although this festival was sacred & solemn, there was a lot of rather bawdy jokes in the style of the wild Crone Baubo, the sexually liberated Goddess of Mirth, who jested with Demeter to try & cheer her up after the loss of her daughter, & get her to bring fertility back to the earth again.

The Romans had a similar festival in honor of Ceres. Also with the Eleusinian mysteries, we see initiation rites enacted to gain inspiration from the gods & the ancestors.

Traditionally, the hunters are out in force. After the end of the breeding season, & before the severe weather comes to kill off many of these creatures anyway, they were taken for the cooking-pot, to supplement what might otherwise be a rather meager winter diet.

With all this death around, it is not surprising that people’s thoughts turned to human death.

The Celtics call All Hallows Eve or Samhain their New Year. Autumn is also the time of the Islamic New Year. Likewise for the Jewish people, with their New Year Rosh Hashanah; & at the end of the High Holy days Sukkot is celebrated, where they build a hut & invite the ancestors & the elemental beings to come to the feast. When you think about it, it makes sense to let the old year die away like the plant life, during this transition into the dark.

It is also traditional to look toward the future, & to dress up as what you want to Become for the New Year. To ask questions, like: Who have I been? Who am I now? & where am I going…? Who do I want to become?

And these are the kind of questions we can ask our beloved dead.

In Wales the souls of the dead are known as ‘the Silent Company’, but when they are welcomed with bwyd cennad y meinv, “the food for the embassy of the dead.” They become our helpers.

We can think of our ancestral allies in 3 ways:

1. Ancestors of the Blood – A common ancestral guide is a relative whom you knew & had some kind of positive connection with in this lifetime, quite often a loving grandparent or great-grandparent.

2. Ancestors of the Soul – This is an ancestral guide from a past life who may have been some kind of teacher or mentor to you.

3. Ancestors of Humanity – These were heroes whose lives were dedicated to the service of human evolution, like Casper Hauser or Jeanne d’Arc. They can be called upon in times of crisis, as Dion Fortune & her group called upon King Arthur & Merlin during the 2^nd World War.

Dear friends, let’s take this opportunity to part the veil – letting go of our sense bound thinking, to consciously work with our spiritual helpers in this time of need. Let us set the table with our intention to join together in communion to celebrate the feast of life in all its aspects; as we build a picture of wholeness on the inner planes, which will ray out into all worlds.

~hag

31 October 2021 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The constellation Orion, accompanied by the Witch Head Nebula, rises from the eastern horizon before midnight on Halloween. Scientists think it might be an ancient supernova remnant. The Witch Head Nebula is categorized as a reflection nebula, or one that shines with the aid of a nearby star. In this case, Rigel shines its bright light on the gas and dust to create the reflection that we see. The dust reflects more blue light than red, which gives it its eerie purplish-blue hue. ~earthsky

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated (with added titles) by Roy Sadler
ALL HALLOWTIDE II
The Ripening Of Creative Powers
v31
The light from spirit depths
strives outwards like the sun,
becomes life’s strength of will
and shines in senses’ dullness
to liberate the forces
that ripen creative powers
in human work the soul initiates.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

All-an-tide (Cornwall)

The first day of All-hallows-tide, observed until November 7 (Western Christianity)

Halloween (Ireland, Canada, United Kingdom, United States etc…)

Hop-tu-Naa is a Celtic festival celebrated in the Isle of Man on 31 October. Predating Halloween, it is the celebration of the original New Year’s Eve (Oie Houney). It is thought to be the oldest unbroken tradition in the Isle of Man

Samhain is a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season & the beginning of winter or the “darker half” of the year. It is the cross quarter between the autumn equinox & the winter solstice.

Image result for The Mound of the Hostages

The Mound of the Hostages, a Neolithic passage tomb at the Hill of Tara, is aligned with the Samhain sunrise. It is mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature & many important events in Irish mythology happen or begin on Samhain.

It was the time when cattle were brought back down from the summer pastures & when livestock were slaughtered for the winter. As at Beltane, special bonfires were lit.

Like Beltane, Samhain was seen as a liminal time, when the boundary between this world & the Otherworld could more easily be crossed. This meant the Aos Sí, the ‘spirits’ or ‘fairies’, could more easily come into our world. Offerings of food & drink were left outside for them.

The souls of the dead were also thought to revisit their homes seeking hospitality. Feasts were had, at which the souls of dead kin were beckoned to attend & a place set at the table for them.

Mumming & guising were part of the festival, & involved people going door-to-door in costume (or in disguise), often reciting verses in exchange for food.

Divination rituals & games were also a big part of the festival.

The first day of the Day of the Dead, celebrated until November 2 (Spanish: Día de Muertos) The multi-day holiday focuses on gatherings of family to pray for & remember members who have died, & help support their spiritual journey.

Traditions connected with the holiday include building private altars called ofrendas, honoring the deceased using sugar skulls, marigolds, & the favorite foods & beverages of the departed, & visiting graves with these as gifts. Visitors also leave possessions of the deceased at the graves.

Scholars trace the origins of the modern Mexican holiday to indigenous observances dating back hundreds of years and to an Aztec festival dedicated to the goddess Mictecacihuatl. The holiday has spread throughout the world, being absorbed within other deep traditions for honoring the dead.

On this day in 683 AD: The Kaaba, the holiest site in Islam, is burned to the ground

683 – During the Siege of Mecca, the Kaaba, catches fire & burns down. The literal meaning of the Arabic word ka`bah (كَعْبَة) is “cube”, or “House of God”, considered the most sacred site in Islam, a similar role to the Tabernacle & Holy of Holies in Judaism.

503 years ago, on Oct. 31, 1517, the story goes, that the small-town monk, Martin Luther, marched up to the castle church in Wittenberg & nailed his ‘95 Theses’ to the door, lighting the flame of the Reformation — the split between the Catholic & Protestant churches. Luther’s act is one of the cornerstones of world history, & remains a lasting symbol of resistance.

Nearly all of American history bears the imprint of that act of protest. Luther’s challenge, the protection he obtained, & the reformers he inspired laid the foundation for the establishment of colonial America.

In 1934, an African American pastor from Georgia made the trip of a lifetime, sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, through the gates of Gibraltar, and across the Mediterranean Sea to the Holy Land. After this pilgrimage, he traveled to Berlin, attending an international conference of Baptist pastors. While in Germany, this man — who was named Michael King — became so impressed with what he learned about the reformer Martin Luther that he decided to do something dramatic. He offered the ultimate tribute to the man’s memory by changing his own name to Martin Luther King. His 5-year-old son was also named Michael — and to the son’s dying day his closest relatives would still call him Mike — but not long after the boy’s father changed his own name, he decided to change his son’s name too, & Michael King Jr. became known to the world as Martin Luther King Jr.

Another dynamic measure of the influence of Martin Luther is the quintessentially modern idea of the individual — of our personal responsibility before ourselves & our God, rather than before any institution, whether church or state. This was as unthinkable before Luther. The contemporary idea of “The People,” along with the democratic impulse that proceeds from it – The more recent ideas of pluralism, religious liberty, & self-government all entered history through the door that Luther opened.

Luther’s second unyielding act of courage was at the ‘imperial diet’ held in the city of Worms in 1521, when he made it clear that he feared God’s judgment more than the judgment of church leaders in that room.

And suddenly the individual had the freedom & possibility of thinking for themselves.

Martin Luther was not inclined to tilt at papal windmills. In fact, until about 1520 he was a vigorous champion of the church. He desired desperately to help Rome elude the fate it ended up experiencing. In fact, in a case of Oedipusian irony he became the very man who brought about everything he had hoped to avoid. As his story illustrates, it was a sublime & ridiculous decoction of forces that created the perfect storm that burst over the European continent, creating what we now call the Reformation.

Today the Catholic & Lutheran churches are taking the memory of 1517 in hand. Pope Francis joined leaders of the Lutheran World Federation in Sweden to hold a joint service in a spirit of unity after 500 years of division.

1517 – Deathday of Fra Bartolomeo, Italian artist

1984 – Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two Sikh security guards. Riots break out in New Delhi & other cities – 4,000 Sikhs are killed.

***

POD (Poem Of the day)

~My soul duels with worms
Hidden in the clay of being
That would gnaw the scroll of mythos
Witch I carry in my heart whole
& speak thru the living word…
No worries
I will cut bait & continue singing…
~hag

Look for me there, in the dark…

Homework: Dress up as who you want to be in the coming year

Cognitive Ritual

~Confessions of a Modern Rosicrucian

Category Archives: Calendar of the Soul

the Sting of Advent

Hold Hands

Time Thief

Pierce thru the Veil

Hallows All

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