Category Archives: Celestial Event

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April 29, 2023Calendar of the Soul, Celestial Event, Community, Festival, History, Insight, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Spring, Upcoming EventsHazel

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~I am a cackle of joy in the throat of wild geese returning…
The apex of the V flapping the wind into warmth –
The fire of wet Hyacinth flaming from an earthly stem
Black mud rejoicing…
~hag

29 April 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Bella Luna – as waxing gibbous moon is near the backward question mark known as the Sickle. She is also close to Leo’s brightest star, Regulus. The Sickle represents the Lion’s head and shoulders.

RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated with added titles by Roy Sadler
EASTERTIDE III
Foundation of the Self
v3
The human ego speaks…
the growing I, in self-forgetfulness
and mindful of its primal state,
is speaking to the whole enwoven world:
‘In you, releasing chains
of private hopes and pains,
I root my inborn truth’.

The mirror verse
PASSIONTIDE 1I (Mothering Sunday in UK)
The World’s Fulfilment
v50
Earth’s Mother speaks…
her joy of growth in every bud’s unfurling,
revealing the inherent forces of her being,
is speaking to the human I:
‘In bringing into you my life,
released from its enchantment,
I reach my true fulfilment’.

“Appearance of St. Catherine & Michael to Joan of Arc,” by Hermann Stilke

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day (so thankful for rsarchive.org/)

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY (From the Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner & Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Feast Day of Saint Endelienta, a Cornish saint of the 5th century. She is believed to be a daughter of the Welsh King Brychan, & legend says that she was a goddaughter of King Arthur. She lived as a hermit at Trentinney where she subsisted on the milk of a cow.

1380 – Death Day of Catherine of Siena, Italian mystic, philosopher, a Scholastic philosopher & theologian & saint. She is believed to have had miraculous visions & felt herself to be united in marriage with Jesus.

Born as the Black Death-ravaged in Siena, Italy, to Lapa Piagenti, the daughter of a local poet, & Giacomo di Benincasa, a cloth dyer who ran his enterprise with the help of his sons. Lapa was about forty years old when she gave premature birth to twin daughters Catherine & Giovanna. She had already borne 22 children, but half of them had died. Giovanna was handed over to a wet-nurse & died soon after. Catherine was nursed by her mother & developed into a healthy child. She was two years old when Lapa had her 25th child, another daughter named Giovanna. As a child Catherine was so merry that the family gave her the pet name of “Euphrosyne”, which is Greek for “joy” & the name of an early Christian saint.

Catherine had her first vision of Christ when she was five or six years old: She & a brother were on the way home from visiting a married sister when she is said to have experienced a vision of Christ seated in glory with the Apostles Peter, Paul, & JohnAt age seven, Catherine vowed to give her whole life to God.

When Catherine was sixteen, her older sister Bonaventura died in childbirth; already anguished by this, Catherine soon learned that her parents wanted her to marry Bonaventura’s widower. She was absolutely opposed & started a massive fast, & cut off her long hair as a protest.

“Build a cell inside your mind, from which you can never flee.” In this inner cell she made her father into a representation of Christ, her mother into the Blessed Virgin Mary, & her brothers into the apostles. Serving them humbly became an opportunity for spiritual growth. She chose to live an active & prayerful life outside a convent’s walls following the model of the Dominicans. Eventually her father gave up & permitted her to live as she pleased.

Her custom of giving away clothing &food without asking anyone’s permission cost her family significantly, but she demanded nothing for herself.

In about 1368, age twenty-one, Catherine experienced what she described in her letters as a “Mystical Marriage” with Jesus. Catherine received, not the ring of gold & jewels that her biographer reports in his version, but the ring of Christ’s foreskin.” Catherine herself mentions the foreskin-as-wedding ring motif in one of her letters, equating the wedding ring of a virgin with a foreskin; she typically claimed that her own wedding ring to Christ was simply invisible

As social & political tensions mounted in Siena, Catherine found herself drawn to intervene in wider politics. She began travelling with her followers throughout northern & central Italy advocating reform of the clergy & advising people that repentance &renewal could be done through “the total love for God.” In Pisa, in 1375, she used what influence she had to sway that city & Lucca away from alliance with the anti-papal league whose force was gaining momentum & strength. It was in Pisa that she received the stigmata.

She received the Holy Eucharist almost daily. This extreme fasting appeared unhealthy in the eyes of the clergy & her own sisterhood. Her confessor ordered her to eat properly. But Catherine claimed that she was unable to, describing her inability to eat as an infermità (illness). From the beginning of 1380, Catherine could neither eat nor swallow water. On February 26 she lost the use of her legs. St Catherine died in Rome, on 29 April 1380, at the age of thirty-three, having suffered a stroke eight days earlier.

Banner — Jeanne d’Arc à la bataille de Patay. Jeanne, as commander of the French army, leads the assault at Patay, where the French won a crushing victory over the English~Franck Craig

1429 – Joan of Arc – the Maid of Orléans, defeats the English which begins the process that ended with England’s complete expulsion from the continent.

“It was necessary that the Maid of Orleans went through a kind of unaware initiation to fulfill her historical mission.It concerned an initiation that could take place in the time of the thirteen nights between the 25th December and 6th January.In the last time before birth the human being is especially accessible to unaware influences from the spiritual world.

On the 6th January the Maid of Orleans was born, to whom the Christ Impulse was implanted just before she saw the physical sunlight.The Maid of Orleans intervened in the course of history in such a way that everything that happened later was determined through it.

The whole map of Europe would be different, also the spiritual life if the English had won.

The Maid was a servant of St. Michael. She was a warrior of his Will and brought this spiritual will to Earth by her determination and actions.In the Central European civilisation were the springs for the whole spiritual culture of the future, the foundation of the ego-culture.

The human ego had to enkindle itself in the outside world, to be awake and realised internally. Thus the ego-culture of Central Europe was aroused from the objective events, the heroic sacrifices, that have brought the changes into etheric bodies and continue to do so, through the recorded memory.

It is necessary that, there would be souls, who send thoughts into the spiritual world like extending arms and bring down the consciousness from the spiritual world, souls conscious of spirit.The proper purpose of all our endevours is to gain a living connection between the physical and spiritual worlds.

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation’s sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit land.”

~Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual Science, a Necessity for the Present Time, The Relation of Man to his Folk Soul – Nuremberg, March 13, 1915, GA 159

“In order to throw a little light on the occult understanding of history, we may ask the question: What would the development of modern Europe have been if at the beginning of the 15th century the Maid of Orleans had not entered the arena of events? Anyone who thinks, even from an entirely external point of view, of the development that took place during this period, must say to himself: Suppose the deeds of the Maid of Orleans were erased from history … then, according to the knowledge obtainable from purely external historical research, one cannot but realise that without the working of higher, super-sensible Powers through the Maid of Orleans, the whole of France, indeed the whole of Europe in the 15th century, would have taken on an altogether different form. Everything in the impulses of will, in the physical brains of those times, was directed towards flooding all Europe with a general conception of the State which would have extinguished the folk-individualities and under this influence a very great deal of what has developed in Europe during the last centuries through the interplay of these folk-individualities would quite certainly have been impossible.

Imagine the deed of the Maid of Orleans blotted out from history, France abandoned to her fate without this intervention, and then ask: Without this deed, what would have become of France? And then think of the role played by France in the whole cultural life of humanity during the centuries following! Add to this the facts which cannot be refuted and are confirmed by actual documents concerning the mission of the Maid of Orleans. This young girl, certainly not highly educated even by the standards of her time, suddenly, before she is twenty years old, feels in the autumn of 1428 that spiritual Powers of the super-sensible worlds are speaking to her. True, she clothes these Powers in forms that are familiar to her, so that she is seeing them through the medium of her own mental images; but that does not do away with the reality of these Powers. Picture to yourselves that she knows that super-sensible Powers are guiding her will towards a definite point — I am speaking to begin with, not of what can be told about these facts from the Akasha Chronicle, but only of what is confirmed by documentary evidence.

We know that the Maid of Orleans confided her vision first of all to a relative who — one would almost say, by chance-happened to understand her; that after many vicissitudes and difficulties she was introduced to the Court of King Charles who, together with the whole French Army, had come to his wit’s end, as the saying goes. We know too, how after every conceivable obstacle had been put in her way, she finally recognised and went straight to the King, who was standing among such a crowd of people that no physical eye could have distinguished him. It is also known that at that moment she confided to him something— he wanted to test her by it — of which it can be said that it was known only to him and to the super-sensible worlds. You also know from ordinary history that it was she who, under the unceasing impulse and urge of her intense faith — it would be better to say, through her actual vision — and in face of the greatest difficulties, led the armies to victory and the King to his crowning.

Who intervened at that time in the course of history? — None other than Beings of higher Hierarchies! The Maid of Orleans was an outer Instrument of these Beings, and it was they who guided the deeds of history”. ~Rudolf Steiner, Occult History, Lecture 2, Stuttgart, 28th December 1910

Image result for 1862 âThe Capture of New Orleans by Union forces

1862 –The Capture of New Orleans by Union forces in the American Civil War.

1899 – Birthday of Duke Ellington, American pianist, composer, & bandleader

1901 – Birthday of Hirohito, Japanese emperor

1910 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the People’s Budget, the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the British public

1945 –The German army in Italy unconditionally surrenders to the Allies.

1945 – Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker they both commit suicide the following day

Image result for 1945 â Dachau concentration camp is liberated

1945 – Dachau concentration camp is liberated by United States troops

1991 – A cyclone strikes the Chittagong district of southeastern Bangladesh with winds of around 155 miles per hour killing at least 238,000 people & leaving as many as 10 million homeless

1991 – The 7.0 Mw earthquake affects Georgia with a maximum intensity killing 370 people

Image result for 11992 âRiots in Los Angeles, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King.

1992 –Riots in Los Angeles, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. Over the next three days 53 people are killed & hundreds of buildings are destroyed

The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

This course is available on Zoom. You will be emailed a Zoom link closer to the time of the class. The course will be recorded and you will receive a link to watch it. Go to the Infinity Foundation web site to enroll

Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance

When we tune into the Cycle of the Seasons, we experience that as the Earth breathes out in the Springtime, the beings of nature reach upwards towards the heights. The longing of the human soul also strives to meet this mood of ascension, which attunes all life to the cosmic expanses.

Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.

This reconnection between heaven & earth was prefigured in the story of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament. Through his dream of the ‘stairway to heaven’, Jacob gave us a prophecy in the picture of a golden ladder on which choirs of Angels traverse between the ‘Above & Below’. The Mystery of the Ascension of Christ, 40 days after the Resurrection at Easter, fulfilled Jacob’s Prophecy. Christ as the Being of Love became the living bridge connecting us to the eternal.

Through this workshop we will learn how humanity will also be transfigured in the fullness of time. The company of the Angelic Hierarchies wait for us, their younger siblings, to ascend, first of all in our thinking, to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while by our sides.

40 Days after The Resurrection = Ascension Festival

Community Bonfire, Pot-Luck, & Prep Stir

Ascension Thursday 18 May 2023

6 – 8 pm at the home of Hazel & Chuck Ginsberg

Please bring food & drink to share –

RSVP to Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, & Velsum Voices Lucien Dante Lazar & Ultra-Violet Archer

1 – 2:30 pm Central Time Saturday 27 May 2023 on zoom

RSVP for code Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

We are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a “World Whitsun”, which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference. The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts, in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this ‘pandemic’. Our groups striving to know Spiritual Science must work together as a community, to have the possibility to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.

50 Days after The Resurrection = Our Pentecost Festival

Community Bonfire, Pot-Luck, & Prep Stir

Whitsunday 28 May 2023

5 – 7 pm at the home of Hazel & Chuck Ginsberg

Please bring food & drink to share –

RSVP to Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE

Easter Sunday

April 9, 2023Calendar of the Soul, Celestial Event, Community, FestivalHazel

“I Think Speech” Podcast for Easter Sunday

“Anthroposophy itself must become like an inner festival of Resurrection for the human soul. It must bring an Easter mood into the human being’s world-conception.” – Rudolf Steiner, The Easter Festival in relation to the Mysteries.

Easter Salutations – I apologize for the tech difficulties around the Mary Magdalene zoom presentation – so frustrating, I know.

We did record the live event. Here is the link

Thank you for your interest & kind understanding…

PS. If anyone wants to volunteer to help with hosting the tech for my future zoom events,

please contact me Hazel@ReverseRitual.com

Blessings as we move thru the Resurrection into the Mystery of the 40 days until Ascension.

~Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

“A jubilant breath pervades the prayers of Easter, expressing itself twice, as with inward necessity, in the word “rejoice”…First, the breathing soul-sphere of the whole planet rejoices, that renewed cosmic sphere of sunlit clouds, air and wind into which the earth grows in Spring; then, the inward life of man, touched by the Risen Christ, rejoices too. We recognize the wide span of the soul at Easter: it comprises the outward and the inward world, macrocosm and microcosm.” – excerpt from “The Three Years” by Emil Bock.

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

HOLY WEEK
Communion In The Body
v52
When drawn from depths of soul
the spirit is communing with the beauty
arising from the springlife’s cosmic harmony,
then streaming from the heavens
life’s force invigorates the human body
and powerfully binds
the spirit’s being to the human presence.

From the soul’s inner being the spirit turned towards the springlife’s beauty in Holy Week. At Easter the world’s revelation awakens joy in the soul, releasing thought from an invigorated body to find our spiritual origin. A new year begins. The soul’s longing has been fulfilled and the spirit, the light of the world, is now speaking in us..

EASTER
In Unison With Light
v1
When streaming from the cosmic spheres
the sun to human sense is speaking
and joy from depths of soul
is with the light as one in seeing,
then drawn from sheath of self
thoughts rise to far horizons
and dimly bind
the human being to the spirit’s presence.

These two verses mirror each other more than any other pair.

9 April 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars” – This morning my beloved & I, with our sweet bird dog Winnifred J. Rabbit, attended the Easter Sunrise at the Great Inland Sea of Chicago, where waning Bella Luna was high in the South as the New Sun rose…Glorious – He is Risen – Risen In deed.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Jacques Callot | Ste. Marie Cléophée (St. Mary Cleophas), April 9th, from Les Images De Tous Les Saincts et Saintes de L'Année (Images of All of the Saints and Religious Events of

Feast Day of of Mary Cleophas, who was at the crucifixion with Mary Magdalen & Mary-Sophia the Mother of Jesus

1241 –The Templars were called in to help defeat the Mongol Invasions. The Templars worked hard to preserve the integrity of Europe. 73 years later – a little over the span of a human life – they were exterminated by the same forces that worked in the Mongols Ghengis Kahn & Kublai Kahn.

1626 – The death day of Francis Bacon. In Karmic Relationships Steiner indicates that in a former life he was, Harun al Rashid.

“I have already spoken, here at Dornach too, of Lord Bacon of Verulam as the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid. We know how intense and determining an influence Bacon’s conceptions had on the whole succeeding evolution of the spiritual life, notably in its finer impulses and movements. Now the remarkable thing is this, that in Lord Bacon himself something took place which we may describe as a morbid elimination of old spirituality. For such spirituality he had after all possessed when he was Haroun al Raschid.

And thus we see, proceeding from the impulse of Lord Bacon, a whole world of daemonic beings. The world was literally filled supersensibly and sensibly with daemonic beings. (When I say “sensibly” I meant not, of course, visibly, but within the world of sense.)

Now it chiefly fell to the individuality of Alexander to wage war against these daemonic idols of Lord Bacon, Francis Bacon of Verulam. And similar activities, exceedingly important ones, were taking place on earth below. For otherwise the materialism of the 19th century would have broken in upon the world in a far more devastating way even than it did. Similar activities, taking place in the spiritual and in the physical world together, were allotted to the stream of Michael, until at length at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century there took place in super-sensible regions what I have already described as the enactment of a great and sublime super-sensible ritual and ceremony”.

The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance

Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.

~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy

Saturday 27 May 2023 on zoom

Find a collection of the many RECORDINGS of Presentations, Programs & Festivals HERE

Holy Saturday

April 8, 2023Celestial Event, Community, FestivalHazel

There was a glitch in yesterday’s link, so here is the podcast from yesterday ‘I Think Speech’ Podcast for Good Friday

Here is the podcast for HOLY SATURN DAY on ‘I Think Speech’

In the New Mysteries we follow the path of Rosicrucian/Christian initiation through Holy Week. With every step, from the recognition of the old atavistic Sun on Palm Sunday, through to the meeting of the Saturn-Spirit and The Harrowing of Hell, we sow healing seeds, sprouted in the blood of Christ, that spark the rising of the New Sun of Easter, within ourselves and in the Universe.

Each day of the week brings us in contact with the Wandering Stars, the Spiritual Beings of the planetary spheres, (Today is Saturn Day) this leads to a conquest of a corresponding layer in the interior of the earth. The Beatitudes are the spiritual weapon we must wield to fortify the development of self-determination in the human ego led by Christ, giving us the strength to make the darkness transparent. Like Christ, we must descend to ascend.

Every year we have a chance to recapitulate the original Easter event. We rest on the Sabbath, Saturn-day – In Christo morimur – This is the Mystic-death or temple sleep of the initiate; remembering that In the Garden of Gethsemane – the midpoint of the earth, the epicenter of the cosmos – between the rocky hill of Golgotha, part of the lunar Mount Moriah, and it’s polar opposite the Solar Mount Zion, there was a New Tomb where the body of Christ rested, and yet it was the Oldest Tomb, for it was formerly a primal fissure, a gorge splitting Jerusalem in two, called by some Adam’s Grave –known as the gate to the underworld.

The earthquakes of Good Friday and Holy Saturday tore open the original fissure. As the veil of the Temple “was rent in twain”, vistas were opened into the interior of the earth. “He was lowered into the grave of the earth’, and so it was, that The Christ went into the Earth’s Interior, His blood becoming the medicine for our continued evolution.

The darkness of Saturn is lit up from within by the Resurrected Sun. The Easter garden begins to bloom, so that our soul can behold, like the Magdalana before us, The Risen One as the gardener of the New Jerusalem.

In ‘The Birth of a New Agriculture: Koberwitz 1924’ , we learn that the earth underwent a change through the deed of redemption on Golgotha, a transformation of the unruly Mars powers of rusty iron into the silvery light of Mercury. This transforming of iron thru the sacred mystery of the Christ-blood is a determining factor in the transformation of earthly substance, which will later be carried over into the transubstantiation of the earth. The spirit radiates from the heights and yet is also carried to us by the eternal divine world of the depths. ‘May there ascend from the Depths the prayer that is heard in the Heights’. We can send our prayer to the Christ-heart in the earth’s depths, to help overcome and redeem the adversarial powers that hold sway in the nine layers of the earth’s interior. The agricultural course was a stepping stone to this ultimate aim.

Spiritual science tells us that when the blood flowed into the earth from the cross on Golgotha, a new Sun-globe was born in the interior of the earth. This golden earth-center is the legendary land of Shambhalla, hidden away, yet waiting to be re-discovered by the seeking, Christ-guided human soul.

The Tomb becomes the altar, a sacred place to commune with the gods – with the souls of the departed as our intermediaries. The tomb becomes the Round table, and the Parsifal question leads us to find Christ in the etheric.

The tomb becomes the cube of the New Jerusalem.

Before the mystery of Golgotha, the task of evolution was that the cosmos would become human, after this turning point, the human becomes cosmos -The New Sun -The imperishable resurrection-body uniting with the Cosmic- Sophia.

May we all work to spiritualize the Earth

~hag

8 April 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”

Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Recognition

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Song-Circle with Velsum Voices = Lucien Dante Lazar & Ultra-Violet Archer

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT a hybrid event

in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map)

& on zoom https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator

$10 more or less…www.rschicago.org/donate

Hazel will be making her famous biodynamic grilled Paschal Lamb! Please bring food & drink to share to fill out the feast for our Easter meal.

Good Friday

April 7, 2023Celestial Event, Community, Festival, History, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Speaking with the Stars, Upcoming EventHazel

Today’s ‘I Think Speech’ Podcast for Good Friday

“In the sciences, people quickly come to regard as their own personal property that which they have learned and had passed on to them at the universities and academies. If someone else comes along with new ideas that contradict the Credo and in fact even threaten to overturn it, then all passions are raised against this threat and no method is left untried to suppress it. People resist it in every way possible: pretending not to have heard about it; speaking disparagingly of it, as if it were not even worth the effort of looking into the matter. And so a new truth can have a long wait before finally being accepted.” — Goethe’

7 April 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Venus guides the way down to fainter, lower Mercury in twilight. And as darkness deepens, look for the Pleiades above Venus.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Édouard Schuré | Les Éditions Discovery | Discovery Publisher

1929 – Deathday of Édouard Schuré, a French philosopher, poet, playwright, novelist, music critic, & publicist of esoteric literature. Born in the old cathedral city of Strasbourg, as a young boy he experienced certain events that, as he described them many years later, “Ieft traces upon my thoughts, to which my memory returns ever and again.” The result of these events he called “inner vision, evoked by impressions of the external world.” The first of these experiences occurred shortly after the death of his mother, when he & his father visited a resort in Alsace. On the walls of one of the buildings the ten-year-old boy saw a remarkable series of frescoes, depicting the world of undines, sylphs, gnomes & fire-spirits. Before these representations of the Elemental Beings, the boy was transported into another world, the world of creative fantasy. Like a talisman, the pictures awakened the magic forces of wonder in the child soul, & the result was a new perception.

Not long after the death of his father, which occurred when Schure was fourteen, he visited Paris, & saw for the first time the classical sculptures in the Louvre. The beauty of the Venus di Milo, of Dionysus, of the wounded Amazon, penetrated deeply into the boy, awakening in him a love & appreciation for the world of ancient Greece, which was to play so significant a role in his later work as a playwright. In these sculptures Schure became aware of the fact that a divine beauty can be made manifest in physical substance through the magic of art. At about this same time Schure read a description of the Eleusinian Mysteries of Ancient Greece, & the inner pictures this evoked were so vivid, so compelling, that he dedicated himself to the task of recreating the sacred drama of Eleusis for modern humanity. For Schure was convinced that through the experiencing of such a drama, people of modern times can acquire a totally new conception of the relationship between the spiritual striving of the ancient world & the religious conceptions of today.

Histoire Du Lied: Ou La Chanson Populaire En Allemagne... (French Edition): Schur, Douard, Schure, Edouard: 9781273357374: Amazon.com: Books

Parallel with these experiences of soul & spirit, Schure’s early years were devoted to formal education. Eventually he received his degree in law at the University of Strasbourg, but he never entered into practice. He visited Germany, remaining there for a few years, during which time he wrote Histoire du lied published in 1868. In this book he expressed his love for music & poetry which had been enhanced by his personal acquaintance with Richard Wagner, then living in Munich.

Shortly after his return from his travels in Germany, Schure married the sister of his friend, the composer Nessler. They moved to Paris, where Schure continued his writing & studies, making friends with some of the most important men & women in the cultural life of France of his time. With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Schure & his wife went to Italy.

the great initiates edouard schure: edouard schure: Amazon.com: Books

In Florence Schure made the second great friendship of his life. One day Malvida von Meysenbergs, the devoted admirer & helper of the philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, introduced Edouard Schure to a Greek lady, Margherita Albana Mignaty. The meeting made a profound impression upon Schure, an impression he was to recall clearly in the last year of his life: “When I saw those great sunny radiant eyes directed questioningly upon me, I felt my consciousness almost desert me, for my whole being seemed called upon to reveal itself.” In the presence of this beautiful woman, so reminiscent of the women of the classical Greece he so deeply loved, Schure once again found access to the spiritual world opening within him. In Margherita Albana Mignaty he discovered a soul to whom the unseen world was as immanent as the physical. This direct relationship with the spiritual world was the result of the death of her child, which had taken place some years before. Through their many conversations, Schure’s own spiritual perception broadened & deepened beyond anything he had previously imagined. He referred to her as his Muse, & saw in her a “spirit that moves mountains, a love which awakens and creates souls, and whose sublime inspiration burns like a radiant light.” on one occasion he asked her how she acquired such precise knowledge of the spiritual history of humankind, such intimate details concerning long-forgotten antiquity. Her reply was profoundly simple: “When I wish to penetrate to the very depths of a subject, I shut myself in my room and reveal myself to myself.” Through the inspiration of Margherita Albana Mignaty ‘as a testimony of a faith acquired and shared,’ Schure’s book The Great Initiates came into being.

Schuré now turned increasingly to the esoteric & the occult, his major influence being the famous French occultist-scholar Fabre d’Olivet. In 1884, he met the founder of the Theosophical Society Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Although unwelcome in the Theosophical Society, he nevertheless entered.

Marie Steiner von Sivers yong | Reverse Ritual

In 1900, the actress Marie von Sivers came into contact with him because she intended to translate his works into German (The Great Initiates, The Sacred Drama of Eleusis & The Children of Lucifer). At the German Section of the Theosophical Society, he met the Austrian philosopher & later founder of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner. In 1906, Sivers brought about a meeting between Schuré & Steiner. Schuré was deeply impressed & thought of Steiner as an authentic ‘initiate’ in line with his The Great Initiates. After hearing Steiner lecture in Paris for the first time in 1906, Schuré in an ecstatic state ran home & wrote down the entirety of the lecture from memory. This first lecture, & the other lectures in the series (which Schuré wrote down) were published as Esoteric Cosmology. Subsequently, Steiner & von Sivers staged Schuré’s esoteric dramas at the Theosophical Congresses in Berlin & Munich. Schuré’s The Children of Lucifer, served as a precursor of Rudolf Steiner’s own esoteric dramas.

LE MYSTÈRE CHRÉTIEN ET LES MYSTÈRES ANTIQUES by Rudolf Steiner

In 1908 Schuré brought out Le Mystère Chrétien et les Mystères Antiques, a French translation of Steiner’s work Christianity as Mystical Fact & the Mysteries of Antiquity.

Édouard Schuré was often visited by Rudolf Steiner in Barr, Alsace. Steiner produced many of Schure’s plays. In speaking about his book The Great Initiates Steiner says: “Édouard Schuré speaks about the ‘Great Illuminated,’ the Great Initiates, who have looked deeply into the background of things, and from this background have given great impulses for the spiritual development of mankind. He traces the great spiritual deeds of Rama, Krishna, Hermes, Pythagoras and Plato, in order to show the unification of all these impulses in Christ…. The light streaming from Schuré’s book enlightens those who wish to be firmly rooted in the spiritual sources from which strength and certainty for modern life can be drawn.” ~Rudolf Steiner

Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Recognition

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Song-Circle with Velsum Voices = Lucien Dante Lazar & Ultra-Violet Archer

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT a hybrid event

in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map)

& on zoom https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator

$10 more or less…www.rschicago.org/donate

Hazel will be making her famous biodynamic grilled Paschal Lamb! Please bring food & drink to share to fill out the feast for our Easter meal.

Holy Thursday

April 6, 2023Celestial Event, Community, Festival, History, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Upcoming EventsHazel

Shipley Art Gallery; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

You are welcome to listen to the ‘I Think Speech’ Podcast on the theme of Holy Thursday.

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hazel-archer-ginsberg/episodes/Maunday-Thursday-2021-eu129c/a-a1ptlh

6 April 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Find Bella Luna brightly glowing near Spica, the brightest star in Virgo the Maiden. The bright moon – in a waning gibbous phase – may overwhelm Spica. They will travel together across the sky all night until dawn.

Mary Magdalene & the Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Recognition

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Song-Circle with Velsum Voices = Lucien Dante Lazar & Ultra-Violet Archer

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT a hybrid event

in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map)

& on zoom https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator

$10 more or less…www.rschicago.org/donate

Hazel will be making her famous annual biodynamic grilled Paschal Lamb! Please bring food & drink to share to fill out the feast for our Easter meal.

The Holy Trinity Lord Of The Dance As Sung By Many A Choir Asia Painting by Gloria Ssali — Gloria Ssaili

“What is to be the starting force & impulse for events in social & ethical life must come out of the spiritual world.” ~Rudolf Steiner, New Spiritual Impulses in History” Dornach 16 December, 1917

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

What Makes a Council Ecumenical? Part I (A Florilegium) – Ubi Petrus Ibi Ecclesia

582- Death & Feast Day of Eutychius of Constantinople, Toward the end of his life, Eutychius maintained an opinion that after the resurrection the body will be “more subtle than air” & no longer a tangible thing. This was considered heretical, because it was taken as a denial of the doctrine of physical, corporeal resurrection.

How Raphael won his place within the Renaissance | art | Phaidon

TODAY in 1483 – Good Friday – Birthday of Raphael

TODAY in 1520 – Good Friday – Deathday of Raphael

“It must seem strange that Raphael was the same person as a thorny character like John the Baptist. How could it happen that this thorny man, who had to pave the way for the Mystery of Golgotha in such a violent way, reappeared as the gentle, pliable, charming Raphael? But look at this. Raphael’s father, Giovanni Santi, died when Raphael was eleven. He was a painter. He was not a great painter so far as external achievements go, but he had great ideas in his head, although he could not put them on camas because he had no technical skill. He was also a poet. There was a great deal of fantasy in him, but the physical capacities simply were not there. He went early through the portal of death, and then his forces worked into his son. In Raphael’s hands and imagination worked all that his father could send into the physical world. One can say that the old Giovanni Santi was a painter without hands in the supersensible world, for in a wonderful karmic relationship he supplied, in combination with the Christ-filled individuality of the Baptist, what came to expression in Raphael. The supersensible world had to work with the physical world to achieve this result. It shows how the so-called dead are able to influence those who have been left behind…” ~ Rudolf Steiner, On the Relationship with the Dead, 23 April 1913

Raphael, as we know from was an Italian painter & architect of the High Renaissance. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop &, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace. From 1517 until his death, Raphael lived in the Palazzo Caprini in the Borgo, in rather grand style in a palace designed by Bramante. He never married, & was thought to be bi-sexual. He is said to have had many affairs, but a permanent fixture in his life in Rome was “La Fornarina”, Margherita Luti, the daughter of a baker (fornaro) named Francesco Luti from Siena.

The story goes that Raphael’s premature death on Good Friday, which was also his 37th birthday, was caused by a night of excessive sex with Luti, after which he fell into a fever &, not telling his doctors that this was its cause, was given the wrong cure, which killed him. At his request, Raphael was buried in the Pantheon.

His funeral was extremely grand, attended by large crowds. The inscription in his marble sarcophagus, an elegiac distich written by Pietro Bembo, reads: “Ille hic est Raffael, timuit quo sospite vinci, rerum magna parens et moriente mori”, meaning: “Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he was dying, feared herself to die.”

Rudolf Steiner speaks about him in his various incarnations, in ‘The Last Address’ – The Individuality of Elias, John, Raphael, Novalis. Dornach, Michaelmas Eve, 1924, GA 238

Lucas Cranach the Elder | Northern Renaissance painter | Tutt'Art@ | Pittura • Scultura • Poesia • Musica

1472 –Birthday of Lucas Cranach the Elder, a German Renaissance painter & printmaker

Madonna del Cardellino | The Life of Jesus

1520 – Good Friday – Deathday of Raphael

1869 – Celluloid is patented

Gandhi's Salt: How a Fistful of Mud and Seawater Shook the British Empire – Rivera Sun

1930 – Gandhi raises a lump of mud and salt and declares, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire,” beginning the Salt Satyagraha

Intelsat 1: commercial communications satellite

1965 – Launch of Early Bird, the first commercial communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit

IGOR STRAVINSKY. Igor Stravinsky always seemed to be on… | by Hailey Buckley | Alphabeticon | Medium

1971 – Deathday of Igor Stravinsky, Russian-American pianist, composer, & conductor

Isaac Asimov: How to Learn Like Nobody Else | by Zat Rana | Personal Growth | Medium — Ratt Rana

1992 – Deathday of Isaac Asimov, American science fiction writer

2015 – Deathday of Ray Charles

The Mystery of Ascension with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Course Number 231154 / Zoom
Date: Thursday, May 11
Time 7:00 – 8:30 PM CST
Cost $33/23 payment 10 days in advance

Together we will gain insights in how to rise up to our Higher Self by participating in this harmonizing spring-dialogue between the worlds.

~Vitae Sophia~A Whitsun Festival of United Soul Endeavor with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Velsum Voices & Eurythmy

Saturday 27 May 2023 a Hybrid event in person* & on zoom

Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83663366670?pwd=L292UzlOR1pkZjBXSWpxK1B2b0o1dz09 Meeting ID: 836 6336 6670 / Passcode: 397593

For more Info. contact Hag@RSChicago.org Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator
*Rudolf Steiner Branch 4249 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618 (map) www.rschicago.org/donate