Category Archives: Celestial Event

Appeal for Reconciliation

Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars

12 April 2017 – Astro-Weather: Right after dark, the Sickle of Leo stands vertical, high in the south. Its bottom star is Regulus, Leo’s brightest. Leo the lion is walking horizontally westward, with the Sickle forming his front leg, chest, mane, & part of his head

Mars continues to put on a nice show these April evenings  appearing high in the west an hour after sunset & doesn’t dip below the horizon until after 9 pm CDT.

~Seed Moon Full & Bright
Holy week, the Fool takes flight ~hag

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

3rd Night of Passover

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1204 – Enrico Dandolo conquers Constaninople.   He is remembered for his blindness, piety, longevity, & shrewdness, & is infamous for his role in the 4th Crusade & the Sack of Constantinople in which he, at age ninety & blind, led the Venetian contingent

1925 – The last Leading thought given by Rudolf Steiner

1927 – Rocksprings, Texas was hit by an F5 tornado that destroyed 235 of the 247 buildings in the town & killed 172 townspeople & injured 205

1934 – The U.S. Auto-Lite strike begins, culminating in a five-day melee between Ohio National Guard troops & 6,000 strikers& picketers

1945 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in office; Vice President Harry Truman, becomes President upon Roosevelt’s death

1955 – The polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, is declared safe and effective

2002 – A suicide bomber blows herself up at the entrance to Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda Market, killing 7people & wounding 104.

2007 – A suicide bomber penetrates the Green Zone & detonates in a cafeteria within a parliament building, killing Iraqi MP Mohammed Awad & wounding more than 20other people.

2013 – 2 suicide bombers kill three Chadian soldiers & injure dozens of civilians at a market in Kidal, Mali

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Karen Bing

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Into my Inner Essence
Gushes the riches
Of the sense world…
The Wisdom of The Logos finds Herself
In the mirror-image of my Eye,
That Her Power out of me
May shape anew the eternal resurrection…
~hag

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The Foundation Stone Meditation was given as our spiritual touchstone. And it becomes an actual path with which we can maintain our connection to the being of Rudolf Steiner. If we stand on this Foundation Stone of Love we can live into the destiny given at the Christmas Conference. Our efforts then become a gift of gratitude to this great initiate for the sacrifice he offered up when he united his karma with that of the Society. “We experienced what this sacrificial deed entailed” wrote Marie Steiner von Sivers, “an immense abundance of spiritual revelations he brought down & that he paid for with his death”

At the end of her ‘appeal for reconciliation’ in 1942, Marie Steiner wrote, “Can we not in view of this sacrifice & this death, for which as individuals & as society members all of us certainly bear guilt, for he assumed OUR karma, can we not forget, reconcile, & open wide our gates to the seekers? We must be able to work together again, denying collaboration to nobody who is faithful to the cause & to Rudolf Steiner.”

If we do our part, working on our own inner development, as well as practicing love & forgiveness to work out our karma in community, to merge the 2 streams of the Platonists & Aristotelians into the middle stream of Lazurus-John – then the Anthroposophical Society can become the earthly instrument of Divine Will it is meant to be.

I wrote this in response to the recent AGM in Dornach & after becoming inspired by reading “May Human Beings Hear It” by Sergei O. Prokofieff – a true conscious human being & anthroposopher.

~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

‘At the turning point of time
The cosmic spirit-light of the world
Entered the stream of earth existence.
Darkness of night had ceased its reign;
Day-radiant light
Shone forth in human souls:
Light
That gives warmth
To simple shepherd’s hearts;
Light
That enlightens
The wise heads of kings.

Light divine,
Christ-Sun,
Warm
Our hearts;
Enlighten
Our heads;
That good may become
What from our hearts
We are founding,
What from our heads
We direct,
With focused will’ ~RS FSM

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An offering from Frank Agrama:

“Elderberries 3Fold Cafe, is a cultural initiative to transform society through service.  The platform blurs the lines between who is serving who, due to the all-around experience of transformation, for both server and docent, co-worker and community.

Our opportunity in Chicago, is fertile.  The well-maintained anthroposophically rooted movements surrounding, will have a space to meet one another.  The social organism can experience a new level of synergy and thus renewal.  In a refreshing and inspiring way, we have an opportunity to redefine the value of an Anthroposophical Community Center.

Besides holding a space for social nourishment, a key ingredient to consider is empowering the youth.  As both a gathering and co-working space, the youth impulse can find a moral and activating home base alongside the elders, welcoming opportunities for mentorship as well as leadership within the space and ultimately out into the world.

 We aim to host the arts, as they emerge in the forms that they arrive to us, be it poetry, music, theater, conversation, workshop, or as studio space rented in the back.

The cafe will bring new opportunities to meeting and sharing anthroposophy, authentic, vital, and personal.  Our goal is to enrich, expand and empower the local community.  Thank you”.

So my friends – We are each sharing our hopes that this initiative can be realized in Chicago. We’d love to hear from you. What do you think?

You can read more from Frank Agrama, (& see his art) & other Youth in the current issue of Being Human: “So, friends, what should we write about the Youth Section?”

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Holy Wednesday from Emil Bock’s The Three Years – Matthew 26: 3-16

The “Still Week” – as Holy Week is called in some countries – is not really still until the middle day is past. On Palm Sunday the city was in a state of tremor; on Monday the tables of the vendors and money-changers were overturned in the Temple; on Tuesday, sword-thrusts were dealt in spiritual conflict between Christ and His opponents. It is not until the last part of the week that stillness descends. Wednesday, Mercury Day, is the turning point. The mercurial element of living movement represents the transition from the first unquiet days of the “Still Week” to those in which the consummation of Christ’s life moves into ever deeper stillness.

Towards evening on Wednesday a scene stands out which, although it has also occurred before, takes on a special significance on this middle day of balance. The Christ has turned from the tumult of the city to the quiet country town of Bethany, beyond the Mount of Olives. He stays in the circle of those with whom He is particularly united. A meal has been prepared for Him as on other evenings. But it is as though a certain radiance fell upon the scene, shining in advance from the Meal which will be celebrated the next day. A presentment of the Last Supper hovers round the community at the table. The country town of Bethany, quiet as it is, has shortly before been the scene of the raising of Lazarus, the event which had given the signal for battle. Lazarus is one of those gathered round the table; and it is he, as we know, who is described by the Gospel as resting on the heart of Jesus the next evening. At the Last Supper it is he who is nearest to Christ, both outwardly and inwardly.

Two women also belong to the community at table, Martha and Mary Magdalene, whom the Gospel of St. John states to be the sisters of Lazarus. They have been led by the hand of Providence into this circle, which is more related by the spirit than by blood. In the life of each of these three persons there has been an event which brought a radical transformation. For Lazarus it was the awakening from the grave, the great release of the John-spirit for its flight to the heights. For Mary Magdalene the event lay somewhat farther back; it is called in the Gospel a “driving out of devils”. She had been healed of the tragedy of “possession” and had experienced the freeing and purifying of her soul.

For Martha there had also been a significant event; she is said in early Christian tradition to be the woman who was healed of the issue of blood. Destiny had decreed that she should bring with her into life a weakness through which her bodily organism was unable to hold its forces together. Through meeting with the One Who could heal her, a staying power, a formative force, drew into her body, just as an inner peace had entered the soul of Mary Magdalene. The brother and sisters of Bethany became the intimate friends of Christ through healings of the spirit, the soul and the body.

As they all sit at the table with the disciples, Mary is recorded as having anointed the feet of Christ with precious spikenard ointment and wiped them with her hair. St John’s Gospel says that the whole house was filled with the perfume. Mary Magdalene had performed a similar act a year and a half previously. She had experienced a freeing and redeeming through her meeting with the Christ, and in order to show her overflowing gratitude she had, as the Gospel of St. Luke describes, anointed the feet of Christ and dried them with her hair. St. John’s Gospel, in the introductory words to the awakening of Lazarus, refers to this earlier scene (11,2). Mary Magdalene is described in St. Like’s Gospel as the “great sinner”, and it is possible, according to old traditions, that she was a prostitute, driven by demons, in the mundane watering place of Tiberias, near her home at Magdala. But was does her act of anointing signify now? It is the type and symbol of a sacramental act. Therefore, when others declare her deed extravagant and become indignant, Christ can accept what this woman does as a sacrament of death, as a fulfillment of the Last Anointing. On the occasion of the earlier anointing he had said, “Be still; she has loved much, much will be forgiven her.” And one can feel how Mary has since been able to deepen the natural forces of earthly love erring on false paths, and transmute them into religious devotion, and the capacity for sacrifice.

Then the solemn stillness is suddenly broken by a figure who forms a complete contrast to Mary Magdalene.

It is one of the apostles and when he sees the deed of Mary he loses self-control. This is Judas. He says that the precious money which has just been squandered could have been given to the poor, and thus many social needs might have been relieved. St. John’s Gospel, however, makes it plain that his real motives are not the ostensible ones. The Gospel openly calls him a thief. It may well be that the anger which Judas felt at the deed of Mary Magdalene gave the final impetus to his act of betrayal. He had waited a long time in tense expectation that Jesus would come forward publically: then a political miracle would inevitably follow. In this feverish impatience, it seems to him that Christ wastes His time; and finally at Bethany his patience can endure no more. In uncontrolled irritation he goes out to those who lie in wait for the Christ. The second crucial event of the Wednesday is the betrayal by Judas.

Both Judas and Mary Magdalene are typical Mercury people; they are active and temperamental. One of the virtues of their nature is that they are never tedious; something is always happening round them. Mary Magdalene, however, subdues her restlessness and transforms it into devotion, peace and the capacity for love. One can see from the Gospel account that true devotion is the final achievement of an active soul, a soul for whom peace is not mere immobility, but mobility redeemed, made inward. Mary Magdalene has been storm tossed: she has endured sinister experiences. But now an intense power of devotion grows from all that was formerly dark and disturbing. This intensity will later lift her above all other human beings; to her it is granted to be the first to meet and behold the Risen Christ.

Judas is the type of the restless man who must always be outwardly active. He pretends to want something for the poor. However good and commendable social activity may be, it is often only self-deception. The underlying motive is not always a genuine social impulse, but very often one’s own inner restlessness. Many people would be most unhappy if they were obliged to do nothing for a time. It would then be seen that their social zeal is no true inner activity, but a yielding to an unacknowledged weakness. In Judas this kind of mercurial soul meets with a dark fate. His unrest springs from a deeply hidden fear, and it leads to his betrayal of Christ Jesus. Such a soul cannot show devotion; above all, it cannot love. A restless person is not capable of real love; for love is possible only where the soul has found peace. Thus, in the two figures, Mary Magdalene and Judas, two roads separate, as at a crossroads. One leads to the realization of the nearness of Christ; the other into the dark night, into tragedy and suicide.

Marta, the other sister of Lazarus, is a transition, as it were, between Judas and Mary Magdalene. St. Luke’s Gospel tells the story of Mary and Martha earlier on, and has a purpose in doing so. Martha is the constantly active one who could not exist without undertaking some service. One cannot deny the genuine nature of her devotion, but one must not be blind to the fact that the unrest from which she was healed in the body has remained in her soul. Mary, who listens with devotion, is described as the one that has chosen the good part.

The figures taking part in these scenes on the Wednesday show us the crossroads which we must face before we may hope for admittance to the sphere of Maundy Thursday. The ways separate in face of the mystery of the sacrament. Judas is the man without ritual. He becomes restless and loses self-control when he comes into the sphere of true ceremonial worship. Mary Magdalene is the sacramental soul. On the following evening, when the circle of disciples will be united in the Sacrament as under a great dome, it will be apparent who is nearer to Mary, and who to Judas.

Mercury, who for the Greco-Roman world was both the God of Healing and also the God of merchants and of thieves, comes now into the orbit of the Christ Sun. The scene in the house of Lazarus and her sisters at Bethany shows how Mercury, the God of Healing, can himself be healed by the Sun of Christ.»

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Greetings Friends on this Holy Wednesday –

FYI: NO STUDY Holy Thursday or Good Friday

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15 April 2017, Holy Saturday – Our Annual Easter Festival: 
‘The Mystery of Golgotha – Then & Now’
2 pm – 4 pm

What was the Mystery of Golgotha?
What is the Mystery now?
What will it be for the future?
~Art Projections & Discourse with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Group work: Based on Baruch Urieli’s
‘Learning to Experience the Etheric World,
Empathy, the After-Image and a New Social Ethic’

A sneak peak of Our New Art Exhibition by Victoria Martin “I” SEE HEAVEN’ 

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

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16 April 2017, Easter Sunday – 4 pm – 6 pm

The Midwest Eurythmy Group will perform
The Easter Verse from the Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner & Bach Fugue Bb minor ‘5 Voices’ & Prelude #22

Focused Discussion, an Artistic Activity, & Group Eurythmy

$10 Donation goes to support the Midwest Eurythmy Group

Snacks to Share Encouraged (Hazel will bring her famous slow cooked leg of lamb 🙂

At the Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society, 4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map) rudolfsteinerbranch@yahoo.com – calendar of events Check out our Web site! Chicago, IL (Anthroposophical Society in America)

Etching

Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Festival, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars, Spring

11 April 2017 – Astro-Weather: After passing between the Sun & Earth only two weeks ago, Venus already appears in the predawn sky. It rises more than an hour before the Sun & climbs above the eastern horizon some 30 minutes before sunrise. The planet shines so brightly, that it shows up easily in the brightening twilight

At this time of year, the two Dog Stars stand vertically aligned around the end of twilight. Look southwest. Brilliant Sirius in Canis Major is below, & Procyon in Canis Minor is high above

Todd Young

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Those who work with the Original indications in the Calendar of the Soul know that Rudolf Steiner lists the birth & death days, as well as other significant occurrences of various individualities, along with the dates in the calendar.  He said of this: “What is presented here can be useful to those who wish to follow the path of mankind’s spiritual development” ~Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

2nd Night of Passover

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

452 AD – Feast Day of Leo the Great, Pope who convinced Attila the Hun to withdraw from Italy

1727 – Premiere of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion BWV 244b at the St. Thomas Church, Leipzig

1876 – The Order of Elks is organized

1919 – The International Labour Organization is founded

1965 – The Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1965: 55 tornadoes hit in 6 Midwestern states, killing 1256 people

1968 – President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, & financing of housing.

1970 – Apollo 13 is launched?

1976 – The Apple 1 is created

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Hildegard von Bingen

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~I pulled down the stylus of fire & a tablet of crystal
‘Write it all down’ She said…
So I wrote; not what I saw, but what I knew…
Then She parted the bones of my chest
& buried the words in my drumming heart…
Now messages course thru my veins
Etching themselves in the lines of my palms…
~hag

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Beloved Friends – As some of you may know we are building, what Dottie Zold & the Elderberries 3-Fold folks call: The Michael Grail-Road here in Chicago. We are beginning to spread the word, to see what is living in the community, & in the world. It is an invitation to all, & a call to the Spiritual World, to come together to make this initiative move forward, to help bring an Elderberries 3-Fold Café to Chicago. Here is a letter from one the Elderberries, Daniel Evaeus:

Dear friends at the Chicago Branch,

I write to you from the Youth Section at the Goetheanum where the air is full with the scents of Spring. I had the honor to attend the annual general meeting of the world society here which only just ended. I listen to Gerald Haefner, leader of the social science section, paint a picture of the challenges we face today – from Monsanto’s massive land grabs in the Ukraine to the concentration of wealth. I feel my life forces and hope take a blow and I must find a way to recover them on a personal level. What echo’s in my soul is the question of how to be and grow hope in a world where across the globe the essential gesture of democracy is being greatly threatened.

I recall standing across a row of militarized police at Standing Rock, the water protectors by my side shouting. ‘Did you in freedom choose to show up to work today? We are protecting this water not only for you, but for your children and your children’s children.’ Although they were not allowed to respond to our voices and questions, I could witness how in some of their faces the expression of our humanity had pierced through their armor.

 

Since the US election I’ve been asked by European family and friends how I am doing in the midst of the national events. My answer: ‘if it were not for the depth of meaning I experience daily in my work I don’t know how I could live’. To me, Elderberries is the practice of love in action with the intention to create islands of hope and healing across our country. Today when everything is being polarized, our world cries for more humanity and that is why I am committed to Anthroposophy. ~Daniel

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William Blake

Holy Tuesday – From Emil Bock “The 3 Years” – Luke 21: 5-38

«In the early morning Jesus enters the city with His disciples once more. The waves of acclamation and enthusiasm have long since died away. Jesus is involved in the tension of His coming decision, but He will be obedient to the Law up to the last moment and fulfill the sacred customs of preparation for the Passover. There is the feeling that He Himself is the sacrifice to be offered. The people’s hatred is already surging up to Him as flames that will consume the sacrifice. From day to day the powerful sense of His spiritual presence in the city has increased. The more silent the crowds, the more majestically His sovereign will shine in His countenance. Now the day of Mars has been reached and the conflict flares up in earnest. The crowd is silent; their leaders are full of anxiety; their fears produced the hatred which leads to the attack. Every hostile group sends out assailants. One after the other they accost Him with their crafty questions. What would otherwise be a blow in the face or a dragger-thrust takes the guise of questioning.

First of all the members of the Jewish Sanhedrin approach, i.e. the High Priests, Scribes and Elders, ask Jesus what authority He has for His actions; He is required to legalize Himself. Then come the others, the Pharisees and the Herodians, and put the insidious question: “Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar?” The Sadducees follow. They ask Jesus’ opinion concerning the resurrection of the dead. Finally, a single question, intending to expose Him before all the people, asks which commandment He considers the most important of all.

These attacks, marking the outbreak of hostilities, are the proof of how strongly the Being of Christ was making itself felt. Just as dogs bark and bite only when they are afraid, so these ostensible questions, which are arrows of hate, are the outcome of fear.

Jesus answers each of the four questions. He is not satisfied, however, with parrying the blows aimed at Him; He accepts battle and fights back with weapons of the spirit. He uses powerful pictures. During the three previous years He has spoken to the people in poetic parables, and to the disciples in parables of deep mystery. To His opponents He now speaks parables of conflict. He tells the Parable of the Husbandmen to whom the vineyard has been entrusted; how they afterwards refuse to surrender the harvest, slay the owner’s messengers, and finally even his son. The opponents realize that they themselves are meant. In fact, Jesus is telling His enemies that they will slay Him. His parable is a last endeavor to reach the souls of His enemies. Perhaps it may bring them to an awakening; perhaps even now they may be shocked into self-knowledge.

The words of the Tuesday on Holy Week, taken together, are wonderfully relevant to every battle of light and darkness, every struggle for Christian discipleship in conflict with the Christ enemies. Goethe’s statement that world history is nothing else than a continuous fight of belief against unbelief touches the truth that is given in all detail during the Tuesday of Holy Week. All opposition to Christ and hostility to the Spirit has its root in unbelief, in deeply hidden weakness and fear. Discipleship of Christ means courage and strength. The battle is not necessarily fought by one group of men against another. It must be carried on within ourselves. In each human soul fear and courage, opposition to Christ and discipleship of Christ are mingled.»

Current Festival & Program Events

 

 

Vernal Full Moon

Celestial Event, Festival, Insight, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars, Spring

10 April 2017 – Astro-Weather: Full Wind Moon (exactly full at 1:08 AM CDT) Bella Luna Moona shines near Jupiter all night, since they’re both at their oppositions. Spica, the sheath of wheat in the hand of the Virgin is below them

Dalia Flexer

TODAY is the 1st night of Passover

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What is the difference between Knowledge and Wisdom?
Knowledge is understanding how a tool works.
Wisdom is knowing how and when to use it.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

According to Rudolf Stiner’s Calendar of the Soul, this is the Birth Day of the prophets Daniel & Ezekiel. As well as the day Wagner received the inspiration for Parsifal in Zurich, 1857.

Anne Cameron

Daniel – Hebrew “God is my Judge” hero of the Book of Daniel who interprets dreams & receives apocalyptic visions. Daniel & his friends Hananiah, Mishael, & Azariah were among the young Jewish nobility carried off to Babylon following the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. The four are chosen for their intellect & beauty to be trained in the Babylonian court, & are given new names. Daniel is given the Babylonian name Belteshazzar, while his companions are given the Babylonian names Shadrach, Meshach, & Abednego. Daniel & his friends refuse the food & wine provided by the king of Babylon to avoid becoming defiled. They receive wisdom from God & surpass “all the magicians & enchanters of the kingdom.” Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a giant statue made of four metals with feet of mingled iron & clay, smashed by a stone from heaven. Only Daniel is able to interpret it: the dream signifies four kingdoms, of which Babylon is the first, but God will destroy them & replace them with his own kingdom. Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a great tree that shelters all the world & of a heavenly figure who decrees that the tree will be destroyed; again, only Daniel can interpret the dream, which concerns the sovereignty of God over the kings of the earth.

When Nebuchadnezzar’s son King Belshazzar uses the vessels from the Jewish temple for his feast, a hand appears & writes a mysterious message on the wall, which only Daniel can interpret; it tells the king that his kingdom will be given to the Medes & Persians, because Belshazzar, unlike Nebuchadnezzar, has not acknowledged the sovereignty of the God of Daniel. They overthrow Nebuchadnezzar & the new king, Darius the Mede, appoints Daniel to high authority. Jealous rivals attempt to destroy Daniel with an accusation that he worships God instead of the king, & Daniel is thrown into a den of lions, but an angel saves him, his accusers are destroyed, & Daniel is restored to his position.

In the third year of Darius, Daniel has a series of visions. In the first, four beasts come out of the sea, the last with ten horns, & an eleventh horn grows & achieves dominion over the Earth & the “Ancient of Days” (God) gives dominion to “one like a son of man”. An angel interprets the vision.

In the second, a ram with two horns is attacked by a goat with one horn; the one horn breaks & is replaced by four. A little horn arises & attacks the people of God & the temple, & Daniel is informed how long the little horn’s dominion will endure.

In the third, Daniel is troubled to read in holy scripture (the book is not named but appears to be Jeremiah) that Jerusalem would be desolate for 70 years. Daniel repents on behalf of the Jews & requests that Jerusalem & its people be restored. An angel refers to a period of 70 sevens (or weeks) of years.

In the final vision, Daniel sees a period of history culminating in a struggle between the “king of the north” & the “king of the south” in which God’s people suffer terribly; an angel explains that in the end the righteous will be vindicated & God’s kingdom will be established on Earth.

The Prophet Ezekiel describes his calling to be a prophet by going into great detail about his encounter with God & 4 living creatures or Cherubim with four wheels that stayed beside the creatures. For the next five years he incessantly prophesied & acted out the destruction of Jerusalem & its temple, which was met with opposition.

According to the midrash Canticles Rabbah, Shadrach, Meshach, & Abednego asked for his advice as to whether they should resist Nebuchadnezzar’s command & choose death by fire rather than worship his idol. At first God revealed to the prophet that they could not hope for a miraculous rescue; whereupon the prophet was greatly grieved, since these 3 men constituted the “remnant of Judah”. But after they had left the house of the prophet, fully determined to sacrifice their lives to God, Ezekiel received this revelation: “Thou dost believe indeed that I will abandon them. That shall not happen; but do thou let them carry out their intention according to their pious dictates, & tell them nothing”

Ezekiel’s statement about the “closed gate” (Ezekiel 44:2–3) is understood  as another prophecy of the coming Incarnation of Christ : the “gate” signifying the Virgin Mary & the “prince” referring to Jesus. This is one of the readings at Vespers on Great Feasts of the Theotokos in the Eastern Orthodox & Byzantine Catholic Churches. “No one can enter Heaven unless by Mary, as though through a door.” The imagery provides the basis for the concept that God gave Mary to mankind as the “Gate of Heaven” (thence the dedication of churches & convents to the Porta Coeli), an idea also laid out in the Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen) prayer.

837 – Halley’s Comet makes its closest approach to Earth

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Sally Vector

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Look, she said, leaning out the window
To wave at the stream of the Vernal Moon
See
How the reflected Easter light rises…
Mirroring strident spirals of the New Sun
Calling: Become
The cup of victory
& see thru soul eyes
To speak deeds clothed in spirit-light…
~hag

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Dear Friends –

The date of the moveable feast called Easter, contains a unique mystery. For it is determined by a cosmic alignment. So, as many of you know, 1st the sun must enter into the sign of Spring, then it waits, for the moon to come into its vernal fullness…Then the planetary beings whose names correspond with the days of the week come into play. Holy Week.

We are invited to connect to the Solar forces, so when the first Sun-Day after the Full Moon of Spring arrives, then it is time to celebrate the Easter festival.

And there is deeper meaning still in this alignment. It indicates how through the Christ Impulse, humanity is to be set free from the forces of earth-evolution, pure & simple.

It contains a call to humanity to lift ourselves up to the worlds beyond the earth; to once again speak with the stars. It contains a promise, that in the course of world-history, it will be possible, through the working of the Christ Impulse, for humanity to once again be united with the cosmos, in the New Jerusalem. It is for this that we strive when we celebrate the Easter Fest. 

Its consequence, must be looked for in all human history, in the arts, in human thinking, in all social relationships, & even in the materialistic triumphs of modern science.

~ ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

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

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Holy Monday – From Emil Bock – Mark 11: 12-25

«Christ approaches the fig tree at Bethphage and wishes to show the disciples how little value should be attached to the “Hosanna” of the previous day. All that it represented was the last fruits of the old visionary clairvoyance, given by nature, and bound to the body. The words He addresses to the fig tree are, as it were, a challenge to the whole realm of ancient ecstatic vision. Here a momentous decision is made in the history of mankind. Jesus rejects the Hosannas of the people, and Himself brings about the transition to their cry, “Crucify Him”. He has the courage Himself to summon the spiritual blindness through which the people will fanatically demand His death. Humanity must act out of a consciousness that leads to freedom, even if it means tragedy; even if men in their spiritual blindness nail Him on the cross.

On that Monday in Holy Week Christ rejects a temptation. Had He allied Himself with the ancient clairvoyant forces, He might have found public recognition. Not only people would have cried “Hosanna”; they would have crowned Him King. But a final pronouncement is made: Christ will find no link with the ancient forces. His sole aim is that mankind should find the way to awakening and freedom. It is no unloving curse that He utters on the fig trees of those who had lent him the ass and its colt. He acts purely from the nature of his own being. He is the Sun and when the Sun rises, the Moon perforce goes pale. So the moon-forces of the old vision fade away.

The Christ appears before the Temple. Many hundreds of pilgrims have assembled, and around the Temple buying and selling, trading and bargaining are being carried on. In the Temple itself a feverish activity prevails; sacrificial beasts are needed for the Festival, the Passover lamb must be slaughtered. This is a source of business; for the animals have to be brought before they are sacrificed. Old Annas, the notorious miser of world history, knows how to make a profit. He has already made a vast fortune from this market. He has been the wire-puller in the political compromise with the Romans which is the basis of the Temple business. The pilgrims must change their local currency into the official currency which is valid in the Temple. This is Roman currency. Thus the Temple comprises also a Roman Exchange market. The Roman fiscal officers have been admitted to the Temple, although they were representatives of the Cult of Caesar, because it was hoped by this compromise to keep them at least out of the Holy of Holies.

Now Christ comes on the scene. He is coming to fulfil the custom of the feast. But the fire of His burning will has its effect. There is no need for Him to say much. The people are immediately seized with panic. Terror-stricken, they realize into what decadence they have fallen. Something similar had taken place at the feast of the Passover, three years before. At that time the terrifying effect came from the divine nature of the Christ, despite the conscious restraint which was still exercised by Jesus.

But now the divinity is entirely transformed into humanity; it has become intensity of will. He has the right to tear down the mask of decadence of the Temple.

The sun of Christ shines, and the glimmer of the Moon must fade away on the moon-hill of Mount Moriah. The spectres of the night flee from the sun. In place of a magnificent Temple appears a simple room on Mount Zion. There, in the Last Supper, the seed of a new ritual and worship, a Sun-like Sacrament, will be sown. The moon-religion of antiquity will be superseded on the evening of Maundy Thursday, when on the sun-hill of Mount Zion, Christ gives Bread and Wine to His disciples.»

***

Current Festival & Program Events

Sunlight Streams

Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Festival, Insight, Lecture, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars, Spring

9 April 2017 – Astro-Weather: Right after dark, Orion is still well up in the west-southwest in his spring orientation: striding down to the right, with his belt horizontal. The belt points left toward Sirius & right toward Aldebaran &, farther on, the Pleiades

This is a good week to look for Sirius in the evening sky. Blazing as the night sky’s brightest star; only the Moon & Jupiter outshine it on April evenings.

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Badger Sultan

Today is Palm Sunday – The old Sun – Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem – The Prophesy fulfilled

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

1241 –Mongol Invasions which necessitated the help of the Templars. 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. (from Adriana Koulias)

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”. ~RS

***

Chris Manvell

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~At dawn the thread of Time unfurls –
Sunlight streams across Space –
Time reaches in both directions
Knotted in the golden orb of the moment.
The Eye opens, the Heart unlocks, the Navel yawns
& takes the World in its belly
~hag

***

From Emil Bock’s Holy Week: Palm Sunday

Matthew 21: 1-11

«Christ enters the Holy City on the first day of Holy Week. It is at first an unpretentious sight. He rides through the gate of the city upon an ass, followed by His faithful believers. But suddenly, as though he were the God of Spring himself, His entry creates frenzy in the souls of the people. It is as though the crowd were seized with the ecstasy of a pagan Spring Festival. Primitive rites are revived when the people cast down palm branches from the trees. The palm has always ranked as the tree-symbol of the sun which shines in the Spring sky with renewed strength. The crowd spread His path with the symbol of the sun.

Is He in fact perhaps the Friend and Lord of the Sun who has been promised to man as the great King of the Light? Is the original spiritual significance of the city of Jerusalem to be released from enchantment, the city which sheltered on Mount Zion one of the oldest sun-sanctuaries of mankind, before it was overshadowed by Mount Moriah, the Mount of the Moon, with the Temple of Solomon? Has the time of Melchisededek, the great Sun-Initiate, come back?

It would appear as though the Christ had now really found entrance into humanity. The high Sun- Spirit has already lived for three years in a human body and undergone earthly destiny. He held back and kept silence; and whenever He stepped forward He was met with hostility and lack of understanding. Is all this now to take a new direction? Is destiny to find a solution in an ecstatic jubilation?

No, this is the beginning of the most solemn week in human history. The same men who strew palms and break forth into fervid Hosannas will shriek with fanatical hatred a few days later: “Crucify him! Crucify him!” The Cross on Golgotha, the symbol of death, will companion the palm branch, the symbol of life. It is the Christ Himself who brings about the sudden reversal of feeling. He passes through the ecstatic crowd in silence, with grave countenance. He sees through the acclamations; they are merely superficial, and He aims at deeper levels. His will is directed to something very different.»

***

Hilma Af Klint

CHICAGO Holy Week Gatherings:

This year we dedicate our study to those who have crossed the threshold. We will be reading to the dead from “The Mystery of  the resurrection in the light of Anthropsophy” by Sergei O. Prokofieff. We will incorporate ‘The Calendar of the Soul’ verse for Easter,  Group eurythmy, & focused discussion.

Study: 9 April 2017, Palm Sunday 2 pm – 3 pm

*SPECIAL EVENT: 3 pm – 6 pm – Work Party at the branch with Elisabeth Swisher & the youth from CWS – All are Welcome

Study: 13 April 2017, Maundy Thursday 7 pm – 8 pm  

Study: 14 April 2017, Good Friday 7 pm – 8 pm

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15 April 2017, Holy Saturday – Our Easter-Tide Festival: 
‘The Mystery of Golgotha – Then & Now’
2 pm – 4 pm

What was the Mystery of Golgotha?
What is the Mystery now?
What will it be for the future?
~Art Projections & Discourse with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Group work: Based on Baruch Urieli’s
‘Learning to Experience the Etheric World,
Empathy, the After-Image and a New Social Ethic’

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

***

16 April 2017, Easter Sunday – 4 pm – 6 pm

The Midwest Eurythmy Group will perform
The Easter Verse from the Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner & Bach Fugue Bb minor ‘5 Voices’ & Prelude #22

Then we will gather for our study & the reading to the dead from “The Mystery of the resurrection in the light of Anthroposophy” by Sergei O. Prokofieff. – We will incorporate an Artistic Activity related to the study, Group Eurythmy, & Focused Discussion.

$10 Donation goes to support the Midwest Eurythmy Group
& Snacks to Share Encouraged
(Hazel will bring her famous slow cooked leg of lamb :

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society 4249 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago IL. 60618. MAP

 

Can I get a Witness?

Celestial Event, Chicago Event, Festival, Poetry, Quote, Remembering, Rudolf Steiner Quote, Soul to Soul, Speaking with the Stars, Spring

7 April 2017 – Astro-Weather: The Brilliant benevolent King Jupiter reaches opposition & peak visibility tonight. It rises in the eastern sky at sunset & climbs highest in the south around midnight CDT. The giant planet is the night’s brightest celestial object with the exception of the waxing gibbous Moon & sweet Venus, Goddess of Love, which doesn’t rise until morning twilight begins. Jupiter resides among the background stars of Virgo, northwest of that constellation’s brightest star, Spica.

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Henry John Stock

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think”. ~ Martin Luther King

451 – Attila the Hun sacks the town of Metz & attacks other cities in Gaul.

611 – Maya king Uneh Chan of Calakmul sacks rival city-state Palenque in southern Mexico.

1141 – Empress Matilda became the first female ruler of England, adopting the title ‘Lady of the English’.

1614 – Deathday of El Greco, Greek-Spanish painter & sculptor

1724 – Premiere performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig

1805 – German composer Ludwig van Beethoven premiered his Third Symphony, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna.

1906 – Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples – Rudolf Steiner is asked: Question: Could we hear something about the origin of volcanoes? Read his answer in The Evolution of the Earth and Man and The Influence of the Stars

1915 – Birthday of Billie Holiday, American singer-songwriter & actress

1964 – A bulldozer kills Rev. Bruce W. Klunder, a civil rights activist, during a school segregation protest in Cleveland, Ohio, sparking a riot

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Chris Manvell

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~In the small dark mouth of a bird
All days are one
Day, lived on an island of flame…
~hag

***

EASTER-TIDE EVENTS for 2017: 

 Holy Week Gatherings:

This year we dedicate our study to those who have crossed the threshold. We will be reading to the dead from “The Mystery of  the resurrection in the light of Anthroposophy” by Sergei O. Prokofieff. We will incorporate ‘The Calendar of the Soul’ verse for Easter,  Group eurythmy, & focused discussion.

Study: 9 April 2017, Palm Sunday 2 pm – 3 pm

*SPECIAL EVENT: 3 pm – 6 pm – Work Party at the branch with Elisabeth Swisher & the youth from CWS – All are Welcome

Study: 13 April 2017, Maundy Thursday 7 pm – 8 pm  

Study: 14 April 2017, Good Friday 7 pm – 8 pm

***

15 April 2017, Holy Saturday – Our Easter-Tide Festival: 
‘The Mystery of Golgotha – Then & Now’
2 pm – 4 pm

What was the Mystery of Golgotha?
What is the Mystery now?
What will it be for the future?
~Art Projections & Discourse with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg

Group work: Based on Baruch Urieli’s
‘Learning to Experience the Etheric World,
Empathy, the After-Image and a New Social Ethic’

$10 Donation & Snacks to Share Encouraged

***

16 April 2017, Easter Sunday – 4 pm – 6 pm

The Midwest Eurythmy Group will perform
The Easter Verse from the Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner & Bach Fugue Bb minor ‘5 Voices’ & Prelude #22

Then we will gather for our study & the reading to the dead from Chapter 5 of ‘An Outline of Esoteric Science’, entitled ‘Initiation’ – We will incorporate an Artistic Activity related to the study, Group Eurythmy, & Focused Discussion.

$10 Donation goes to support the Midwest Eurythmy Group
& Snacks to Share Encouraged
(Hazel will bring her famous slow cooked leg of lamb :

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society 4249 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago IL. 60618. MAP