Category Archives: Celestial Event

On the March

March is abundant with ‘Holy Days’, finding voice through many cultural expressions.

March 4th is the Deathday of Dr. Ita Wegman close collaborator in many lifetimes with Rudolf Steiner

On the 6thPurim begins at sunset. The Festival commemorates when the Jewish people living in Persia were saved by Esther. It is customary to hold carnival-like celebrations on Purim – a kind of Jewish Mardi Gras.

The 7th is the Full Moon, called The Sap Moon, The Worm Moon, The Crow Moon, or The Lenten Moon.

On the 12th we ‘Spring Forward’ for the dubious ‘Daylight Saving Time’.

Our Chicago Church

Sunday the 12th is also the start of Passion-Tide in the Christian Community.

14 March is Marie Steiner von Sivers Birthday

Vincenzo Camuccini

The 15th is the famous Ides of March; which we all know is the day Julius Caesar was warned by the soothsayers to beware; the day he was assassinated. But did you know that according to the ancient Roman calendar, the Ides of March was considered New Year’s Day, & marked the 1st day of Spring?

March 17, brings us the ‘wearing of the green’ for St. Patrick’s Day. The shamrock shows us the Trinity.

We celebrate the Spring  or Vernal Equinox, on 20 March this year, also known as: Alban Eilir, Eostar, Lady Day, Ostara, & the Rites of Spring – when the Sun, because of the ‘precession of the equinoxes’, enters the sign of Pisces.

Day & night are equal, poised & balanced, but about to tip over to the side of light. It is sacred to the twilight time of dawn, youth, the morning star & the East. The Saxon goddess, Eostre (from whose name we get the direction East & the name of the Holiday Easter) is a dawn goddess, like Aurora & Eos. Just as the dawn is the time of new light, so the Vernal Equinox is the time of new life.

The Equinox is all about harmony & balance – that brief yet eternal time of equilibrium, when day & night are of equal length.

On the 21st begins the Iranian New Year celebration, Norooz, or ‘New Day’. In 622 AD, Mohammed led his followers from Mecca to Medina to escape assassination. According to the story, when his pursuers reached the cave where Mohammed & his followers had taken shelter for the night, they found a dove nesting in front of it & the entrance covered by a spider’s web. So the pursuers passed on, leaving them in peace. Mohammed continued on to Medina, where he & his followers were able to worship freely. Muslims consider this flight — or Hijrah — to be the beginning of their calendar year. People worship quietly on this day, which begins with the 1st sighting of the crescent moon, & in keeping with the rebirth of nature is also considered the 1st day of Spring.

Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov

March 25th is called the ‘Annunciation of Mary.’ – the day that the Angel Gabriel announced that the Luke Mary, was pregnant with the son of god ; who is born 9 months later, on Dec. 25th. How’s that for a nice little spring fertility symbol.

30 March is Rudolf Steiner’s Deathday in 1925

It’s interesting to note that March is the month that both Rudolf Steiner & Ita Wegman die & Marie Steiner von Sivers is born

It is also fitting that March is International Women’s month, since this is the time of the rebirth of nature. It’s a reminder that we have to break the bias of gender inequality to give birth to the future. The future is in our hands, the hands of the midwife, the lap of the mother, & the hands of the Peacemaker. Equity Now!

So let’s honor ourselves & thank the powers of the growing light, knowing that March may come in like a lion, but it goes out like a lamb – As we re-conceive of ourselves in alignment with the powers of Spring…

Peace & Blessed Bee…

~hag

2 March 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Now Jupiter & Venus (occult Mercury) separate. Venus moves above at dusk. Then as night deepens, waxing Bella Luna shines a couple degrees from Pollux. Castor looks on from nearby.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1963 – Deathday of Gunther Wachsmuth, founding member & Secretary of the original Vorstand

The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction…
Is there a path to expansion…..?

PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA

Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm – Purchase tickets at the door or pay online
$12

Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am CT– (10:30 am 1/2 hour break – 11 am) 12:30 pm CT CT– Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50

The Categories of AristotleA process of contraction…exploring a path to expansion

Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to approach Aristotle’s gift to humanity……his Categories?

Perhaps , YES! But an initial acquaintance with them can lead out of the confinement of the intellectual concept to an experience of expansion supported by Eurythmy.

In the evening lecture Claudia will introduce the life of the Categories before they became concepts – Bringing the symbols in a sequence of sounds  (called the Evolutionary Sequence ) out of their conceptual form, to life, supported by Eurythmy and examples of poetry.

During the workshop we will enter into the movement of the poetry presented  during the lecture. This will be accessible to Eurythmists as well as to anyone interested in the life of language, poetry and our alphabet.

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society
4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
https://www.rschicago.org/happenings/calendar 
www.rschicago.org/donate

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

Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.

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

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg,

Song-Circle with Velsum, 

Eurythmy – & an artistic break out session

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT hybrid event in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & on zoom

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

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

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

PRESENTS:

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

Gerald Shepherd

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.

Nancy Poer

~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

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.

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 (mapwww.rschicago.org/donate


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

Love & Wisdom Kiss

MARCH in like a lion…Out like a lamb” doesn’t apply to our weather here in Chicago at least not today on this March 1st 2023…

Unless of course you consider that we are experiencing a powerful conjunction of Venus & Jupiter written into the stars of Pisces at sunset this evening!

From Astrosopher Jonathan Hilton: “Venus and Jupiter stand just into that fish (the Southern Fish) of the two fishes in Pisces, which is swimming towards Aquarius, our future, who one can see pouring the cosmic living water down upon the Sun now in Aquarius…

Rudolf Steiner once described this Piscean age as the time when humanity learns to stand on its own two feet. Pisces is connected to the hands and feet and thus to the will, through which we can transform the Earth or destroy it. Its now in our hands in this time of freedom to turn away from the gods or unite with them. In the two fish we can also see a picture of duality, even polarities, in which we live in this age of decision and choice. We stand always in the tension between the two…

Now we have Jupiter joining Venus here in Pisces, directly below the star Alpheratz. Both of these planetary spheres of being ask us to move into the future towards our higher calling. Jupiter as the sphere of the Spirits of Wisdom, wants to become the realization of our higher ideals, the awakening of the new living thinking, the foundation stone for the New Jerusalem…

Alpheratz is the star marking the forehead (third eye?) of Andromeda as well as the tip of the wing of Pegasus arising from the head of Andromeda. She has just been rescued by Perseus from the sea monster. Clearly Alpheratz carries a special call to humanity’s future evolution towards the new winged thinking, the living or etheric thinking, arising out of the transformed soul (Andromeda)…

Venus, that sphere of love and reintegration with the divine, became through Christ’s deeds on the Earth, the sphere which carries the new Christ mysteries in the Earth, the foundation for the new mysteries out of the true I Am. Yet Venus, the pentagram, can become the downward pentagram of Lucifer, serving only self-love, self-serving egotism, even the pentagram that serves black magic. The choice in our time of freedom, is up to us.

So perhaps one can see that a simple look up to the stars in the early evening sky during the coming week can expand from a feeling of awe and beauty for the two beautiful bright stars to an immense cosmic imagination to inspire our communion with the higher worlds of being.

We are in the season of Lent, a time of preparation for Easter, of remembering the suffering and sacrifice of Christ in his incarnating into flesh. It is a time when we can come to a deeper feeling for the sacrifice and death in us that can lead to resurrection. Just yesterday a friend gave me a poem, which to me speaks to this starry configuration and indeed in general to our feeling for the stars. It is titled Night Sky, by Kathleen Raine.

There came such a clear opening of the night sky,
The deep glass of wonders, the dark mind
In unclouded gaze of the abyss
Opened like the expression of a face.
I looked into that clarity where all things are
End and beginning, and saw
My destiny there: “So” I said, “no other
Was possible ever.
This is I. The pattern stands so for ever”.
What am I? Bound and unbounded,
A pattern among the stars, a point in motion
Tracing my way. I am my way. It is I.
I travel among the wonders.
Held in that gaze and known
In the eye of the abyss,
“Let it be so”, I said,
And my heart laughed with joy
To know the death I must die.

~read the article by Jonathan Hilton
Astrosophy.com

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

399 – Death Day of Socrates – scholar, teacher and philosopher born in ancient Greece. His Socratic method laid the groundwork for Western systems of logic and philosophy. When the political climate of Greece turned against him, Socrates was sentenced to death by hemlock poisoning.

1244 – The Cathar fortress of Montsegur falls into the hands of the Inquisition

The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction…
Is there a path to expansion…..?

PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA

Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm – Purchase tickets at the door or pay online
$12

Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am CT– (10:30 am 1/2 hour break – 11 am) 12:30 pm CT CT– Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50

The Categories of AristotleA process of contraction…exploring a path to expansion

Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to approach Aristotle’s gift to humanity……his Categories?

Perhaps , YES! But an initial acquaintance with them can lead out of the confinement of the intellectual concept to an experience of expansion supported by Eurythmy.

In the evening lecture Claudia will introduce the life of the Categories before they became concepts – Bringing the symbols in a sequence of sounds  (called the Evolutionary Sequence ) out of their conceptual form, to life, supported by Eurythmy and examples of poetry.

During the workshop we will enter into the movement of the poetry presented  during the lecture. This will be accessible to Eurythmists as well as to anyone interested in the life of language, poetry and our alphabet.

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society
4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
https://www.rschicago.org/happenings/calendar 
www.rschicago.org/donate

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

Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.

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

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg,

Song-Circle with Velsum, 

Eurythmy – & an artistic break out session

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT hybrid event in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & on zoom

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

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

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

PRESENTS:

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

Gerald Shepherd

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.

Nancy Poer

~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

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.

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 (mapwww.rschicago.org/donate


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

Life Craft

POD (Poem Of the Day)

Life Craft
Sculpted by The Word
Shaped by desire
Fired by deed
Standing poised between fate & will…
& from the suck of breath & the pull of space
In my rhythmic heart
Verses for the future fly
There where
A glimmer caught
My eye I
Turned to see the primal warmth
In the fires of perhaps
A beacon of mortal possibility
Etched in the bones of my skull
At the edge of
Peripheral vision
That I might
Recollect my
Self divine
~hag

15 February 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Portrait of Galileo by Justus Sustermans

1564 – Birthday of Italian astronomer, mathematician and physicist Galileo Galilei. Galileo grew up in a musical family in Florence, where he began his education in a monastery. He studied medicine at the University of Pisa. Due to financial problems, he didn’t finish his degree, but his years at the university introduced him to mathematics and physics, & Aristotle’s philosophy. As Dante had put it some centuries before, Aristotle is “the Master of those who know”

Galileo published “La Bilancetta” (The Little Balance), his first scientific book, which gained him a reputation. The book commented upon the story of how the king of Syracuse asked Archimedes to verify whether his crown was made of pure gold or a mix of metals.

Galileo quickly figured out the mechanics of the spyglass, improving the original design into a telescope that magnifies normal vision up to 20 times.

He drew the moon’s surface, showing that its surface is bumpy and rocky. In January 1610, he discovered the four most massive moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Today, we know them as the Galilean moons. He laid out all of his findings in his book “Sidereus Nuncius” (The Starry Messenger). Galileo observed that Venus went through phases, just as the moon does.

In 1618, Galileo found himself in a controversy about the nature of comets. earning him the anger of the Inquisition part of the Roman Catholic Church. They declared him suspect of heresy, but he recanted & was able to live comfortably & continue his work.

From THE PRINCIPLE OF SPIRITUAL ECONOMY, GA 109 – I. The Principle of Spiritual Economy in Connection with Questions of Reincarnation: An Aspect of the Spiritual Guidance of Mankind
Heidelberg, January 21, 1909

When a pioneering personality dies, his or her etheric body is always preserved, and occult schools have always known the artifical methods by which this was accomplished. Considering now another characteristic case, we can say that it was important for certain purposes in the more modern age that the etheric body of Galileo was preserved. He was the great reformer of mechanical physics whose accomplishments were so tremendous that one can say many of the purely practical accomplishments of the modern age would not have come about without his discoveries, for all technical progress rests on Galileo’s science of integral and differential calculus, mechanics, and so on. With regard to Galileo, it would have been a waste in nature’s economy had his etheric body, the carrier of his memory and talent, been lost. And that is why his etheric body was transferred to another human being: Michail Lomonosov, who came from a poor Russian village and was later to become the founder of Russian grammar and classical literature. Lomonosov, however, is not the reincarnated Galileo, as might be supposed as a result of superficial investigation. ” ~Rudolf Steiner

1781 – Deathday of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist & art critic – an outstanding representative of the Enlightenment era. His plays & theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature.

The circumstances of Lessing’s life, I may say, have always interested me to an extraordinary degree. Lessing is really the founder of the better sort of journalism, the journalism that has substance and is really out to accomplish something. Before Lessing, poets and dramatists had taken their subjects from the aristocracy. Lessing, on the other hand, is at pains to introduce bourgeois life, ordinary middle-class life, into the drama, the life concerned generally with the destinies of men as men, and not with the destinies of men in so far as they hold some position in society or the like. Purely human conflicts — that is what Lessing wanted to portray on the stage. In the course of his work he applied himself to many great problems, as for example when he tried to determine the boundaries of painting and of poetry in his Laocoon.

But the most interesting thing of all is the powerful impetus with which Lessing fought for the idea of tolerance. You need only take his Nathan the Wise and you will see at once what a foremost place this idea of tolerance has in Lessing’s mind and life. In weaving the fable of the three kings in Nathan the Wise, he wants to show how the three main religions have gone astray from their original forms and are none of them really genuine, and how one must go in search of the true form, which has been lost. Here we have tolerance united with an uncommonly deep and significant idea…

We begin to get an impression of Lessing when we observe, shall I say, the driving force with which he hurls his sentences against his opponents. He wages a polemic against the civilisation of Middle Europe — quite a refined and correct polemic, but at every turn hitting straight home. You must here observe a peculiar nuance in Lessing’s character if you want to understand the make-up of his life. On the one hand we have the sharpness, often caustic sharpness, in such writings as The Dramatic Art of Hamburg, and then we have to find the way over, as it were, to an understanding, for example, of the words used by Lessing when a son had been born to him and had died directly after birth. He writes somewhat as follows in a letter: Yes, he has at once taken leave again of this world of sorrow; he has thereby done the best thing a human being can do. (I cannot cite the passage word for word, but it was to this effect.) In so writing, Lessing is giving expression to his pain in a wonderfully brave way, not for that reason feeling the pain one whit less deeply than someone who can do nothing but bemoan the event. This ability to draw back into himself in pain was characteristic of the man who at the same time knew how to thrust forward with vigour when he was developing his polemics. This is what makes it so affecting to read the letter written when his child had died immediately after birth, leaving the mother seriously ill.

Lessing had moreover this remarkable thing in his destiny — and it is quite characteristic, when one sets out to find the karmic connections in his case — that he was friends in Berlin with a man who was in every particular his opposite, namely, Nikolai.

Of Lessing it can be said — it is not literally true, but it is none the less characteristic — that he never dreamed, because his intellect and his understanding were so keen. On this account, as we shall see tomorrow, he is for the spiritual researcher such an extraordinarily significant personality. But there is something in the very construction of his sentences, something in the home-thrusts with which he lays his opponent in the dust, that really makes every sentence a delight to read.

With Nikolai it is just the opposite. Nikolai is an example of a true philistine. Although a friend of Lessing, he was none the less a typical philistine-bourgeois; and he had visions, most strange and remarkable visions.

Lessing, genius as he was, had no visions, not even dreams. Nikolai literally suffered from visions. They came, and they went away only after leeches had been applied. Yes, in extremity they actually applied leeches to him, in order that he might not be for ever tormented by the spiritual world which would not let him alone…

At the close of his life Lessing wrote the remarkable essay, The Education of the Human Race, at the end of which, quite isolated, as it were, the idea of repeated earth-lives appears. The book shows how mankind goes through one epoch of development after another, and how the Gods gave into man’s hand as a first primer, so to speak, the Old Testament, and then as a second primer the New Testament, and how in the future a third book will come for the further education of the human race. And then all at once the essay is brought to a close with a brief presentation of the idea that man lives through repeated earth-lives. And there Lessing says, again in a way that is absolutely in accord with his character (I am not quoting the actual words, but this is the gist of it): Ought the idea of repeated earth-lives to seem so absurd, considering that it was present in very early times, when men had not yet been spoilt by school learning? The essay then ends with a genuine panegyric on repeated earth-lives, finishing with these beautiful words: “Is not all Eternity mine?” ~ Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships: Volume 1, Lecture 11

TODAY in 1924 Rudolf Steiner founded the 19 step School of Michael on earth: The Esoteric Lessons for the First Class of the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Dornach

The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction…
Is there a path to expansion…..?

PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA

Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm – Purchase tickets at the door or pay online
$12

Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am CT– (10:30 am 1/2 hour break – 11 am) 12:30 pm CT – Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50

Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to approach Aristotle’s gift to humanity……his Categories?

Perhaps , YES! But an initial acquaintance with them can lead out of the confinement of the intellectual concept to an experience of expansion supported by Eurythmy.

In the evening lecture Claudia will introduce the life of the Categories before they became concepts – Bringing the symbols in a sequence of sounds  (called the Evolutionary Sequence ) out of their conceptual form, to life, supported by Eurythmy and examples of poetry.

During the workshop we will enter into the movement of the poetry presented  during the lecture. This will be accessible to Eurythmists as well as to anyone interested in the life of language, poetry and our alphabet.

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society
4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
https://www.rschicago.org/happenings/calendar 
www.rschicago.org/donate

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

Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.

The Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Resurrection

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg,

Insights about Mary Magdalene with Faith DiVecchio

Song-Circle with Velsum, 

Eurythmy – & an artistic break out session

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT hybrid event in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & on zoom

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

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

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

PRESENTS:

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

Gerald Shepherd

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.

Nancy Poer

~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

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.

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 (mapwww.rschicago.org/donate

Harken

Vankessel allegory of air

~Hail breath of Wisdom
Humming forth from
The throat of my beloved
You thrill me
Like a seed bell calling spring
Bidding me
To harken to
The secrets of the ethers
Pulsing thru the bossy wind
Striving to awaken & reveal
Our task
Will you listen?
~hag

Chart via John Jardine Goss/ EarthSky.

11 February 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Today, we can see waning Bella Luna near Spica, the brightest star of Virgo the Maiden.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Image result for St. Gobnait

Feast Day of St. Gobnait, Irish patron Saint of BeeKeepers. She was born in County Clare in the 5th or 6th Century, & is said to have been the sister of Saint Abban. She fled a family feud, taking refuge in the Aran Islands. Here an angel appeared & told her that this was “not the place of her resurrection” & that she should look for a place where she would find nine white deer grazing. She found the deer at the place now known as St. Gobnet’s Wood.

Celtic lore held bees in high esteem, believing the soul left the body as a bee or a butterfly. Gobnait is said to have added beekeeping to her life’s work, developing a lifelong affinity with them. She started a religious order & dedicated her days to helping the sick. She used honey as a healing aid. She is credited with saving the people at Ballyvourney from the plague.

One story tells of how she drove off a brigand by sending a swarm of bees after him and making him restore the cattle he had stolen.

St Gobnait’s well is situated to the North of Ballyagran. It is said that a white stag can sometimes be seen at the well.

660 BC – Traditional date for the founding of Japan by Emperor Jimmu

AD 55 – Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, heir to the Roman emperor-ship, dies under mysterious circumstances in Rome. This clears the way for Nero to become Emperor

1534 – Henry VIII of England is recognized as supreme head of the Church of England

1650 – Deathday of René Descartes, French mathematician & philosopher

1790 – The Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers, petitions U.S. Congress for the abolition of slavery.

1847 – Birthday of Thomas Edison, American engineer and businessman, developed the light bulb and phonograph.

1858 – Bernadette Soubirous’s first vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lourdes, France. Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, & we celebrate her message of peace, & healing. In 1858, a 14-year-old peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, was gathering firewood in the countryside when a beautiful woman, standing on a rock in a natural grotto, appeared to her. This began a series of 18 apparitions in which Bernadette spoke & prayed with the woman. On one visit, the mysterious woman instructed Bernadette to dig into the dry ground & drink from the spring that flowed there. Although no spring was visible, Bernatdette scratched at the ground & a spring began to bubble up. To this day, the waters continue to flow, which have a miraculous healing property. Lourdes is well-known for the many miracles of healing that have taken place there over the years

On 11 February 1858, Bernadette went with her sister Toinette & neighbor Jeanne Abadie to collect some firewood.

“…I came back towards the grotto and started taking off my stockings. I had hardly taken off the first stocking when I heard a sound like a gust of wind. Then I turned my head towards the meadow. I saw the trees quite still: I went on taking off my stockings. I heard the same sound again. As I raised my head to look at the grotto, I saw a lady dressed in white, wearing a white dress, a blue girdle and a yellow rose on each foot, the same color as the chain of her rosary; the beads of the rosary were white….From the niche, or rather the dark alcove behind it, came a dazzling light…”.

Bernadette tried to make the sign of the Cross but she could not, because her hands were trembling. The lady smiled, & invited Soubirous to pray the rosary with her. Soubirous tried to keep this a secret, but Toinette told her mother. After parental cross-examination, she & her sister received a spanking for their story.

Three days later, 14 February, Bernadette returned to the Grotto. She had brought holy water as a test that the apparition was not of evil origin/provenance: “The second time was the following Sunday…Then I started to throw holy water in her direction, and at the same time I said that if she came from God she was to stay, but if not, she must go. She started to smile, and bowed … This was the second time.”

Bernadette’s companions are said to have become afraid when they saw her in ecstasy. She remained ecstatic even as they returned to the village. On 18 February, she spoke of being told by the Lady to return to the Grotto over a period of two weeks. She quoted the apparition: “The Lady spoke to me the third time..She told me also that she did not promise to make me happy in this world, but in the next.”

Bernadette was ordered by her parents to never go there again. She went anyway, & on 24 February, She related that the apparition asked for prayer & penitence for the conversion of sinners.

Bernadette described the apparition as uo petito damizelo (“a tiny maiden“) of about twelve years old. Bernadette insisted that the apparition was no taller than herself. Bernadette was very small even by the standards of other poorly nourished children.

Bernadette described the apparition as dressed in a flowing white robe, with a blue sash around her waist. This was the uniform of a religious group called the Children of Mary, which, on account of her poverty, Bernadette was not permitted to join (although she was admitted after the apparitions). Her Aunt Bernarde was a long-time member.

The next day, she said the apparition asked her to dig in the ground & drink from the spring she found there, that soon became a focal point for pilgrimages. Although it was muddy at first, the stream became increasingly clean.

As word spread, this water was given to medical patients of all kinds, & many reports of miraculous cures followed. Seven of these cures were confirmed. The first person with a “certified miracle” was a woman whose right hand had been deformed as a consequence of an accident.

The government fenced off the Grotto & issued stiff penalties for anybody trying to get near the off-limits area. In the process, Lourdes became a national issue in France, resulting in the intervention of Emperor Napoleon III with an order to reopen the grotto on 4 October 1858. The Church had decided to stay away from the controversy altogether.

Bernadette, knowing the local area well, managed to visit the barricaded grotto under cover of darkness. There, on 25 March, she said she was told: “I am the Immaculate Conception” (“que soy era immaculada concepciou”).

On Easter Sunday, 7 April, her examining doctor stated that Bernadette, in ecstasy, was observed to have held her hands over a lit candle without sustaining harm.

On 16 July, Bernadette went for the last time to the Grotto. “I have never seen her so beautiful before,” she reported.

The Church, faced with nationwide questions, decided to institute an investigative commission on 17 November 1858. On 18 January 1860, the local bishop finally declared that: “The Virgin Mary did appear indeed to Bernadette Soubirous” These events established the Marian veneration in Lourdes, which together with Fátima & the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of the most frequented Marian shrines in the world, & to which between 4-6 million pilgrims travel annually.

In the early sixteenth century, a twelve-year-old shepherdess called Anglèze de Sagazan received a vision of the Virgin Mary near the spring at Garaison (part of the commune of Monléon-Magnoac), somewhat further away. Anglèze’s story is strikingly similar to that of Bernadette: she was a pious but illiterate & poorly educated girl, extremely impoverished, who spoke only in the local language, but successfully convinced authorities that her vision was genuine & persuaded them to obey the instructions of her apparitions. Like Bernadette, she was the only one who could see the apparition (others could apparently hear it); however, the apparition at Garaison’s supernatural powers tended toward the miraculous provision of abundant food, rather than healing the sick & injured.

The Apocalypsis according to St. Bernadette Subirous

“Pray for the poor sinners, pray for a sick world”, the lady told Bernadette and started to heal people who drank from the water.

Bernadette died in 1879. Her body remained uncorrupted. She was beatified in 1925 and canonized in 1933. The text of the “Secrets” was never revealed.

According to the “Schwarzer Brief”, The five prophecies imparted to Lourdes visionary Saint Bernadette Soubirous by the Blessed Mother, were written down before she died & given to Pope Leo XIII. The letters were never revealed by Leo, nor his successor Pope Saint Pius X. In fact, shortly before the turn of the century the letters were ‘misplaced’ & the Vatican ‘lost track’ of them. Bernadette´s letter remained in the Vatican Archives until 1997, when it was discovered by the French Father Antoine LaGrande who searched for material & correspondence on Lourdes. According to LaGrande, the letter consisted of five sheets, which were found in a metal box in the vaults of the Archives. On each sheet, a revelation was written down.

1. Described the development of the Lourdes sanctuary & predicted that it would become an important place of pilgrimage after Bernadette´s death. Many people would be healed by the water from the spring.

2. Mentioned important scientific discoveries including “the use of electric energy” & the invention of several types of machines.

3. Predicted the rise of an evil dictator in Germany which would cause “something horribly evil”. His rule of terror would end in a war in which “nearly all nations participate”.

4. Announced that man would fly into outer space & eventually land on the moon in or around 1970.

5. Was the most detailed text: “Your Holiness, the Holy Virgin told me that with the end of the 20th Century the end of the age of science would follow. A new era of the Faith will begin everywhere on Earth. Eventually the evidence is found that it was God who created the Earth and Man. This will be the beginning of the end of the sciences; the people will not believe in them any longer. Millions will turn back to Christ…” The Church, Bernadette said, would play a new, important role. The loss of trust in the Sciences, said the seer, was caused by the “haughtiness of the physicians who used their knowledge to create a monster, a creature which is neither man nor beast.” This would cause a public scandal. The people would realize that the scientists went too far – & “chase them like you chase a rapacious wolf.”

Furthermore, Bernadette warns that a new, big war could break out at the turn of the Millennium. “After the year 2000 a final clash between nations will happen. In a horrible battle, 5.650.451 soldiers will loose their life & a bomb with great impact will be thrown onto a city in Persia.”

If the original text indeed says “thrown onto”, it would be a remarkable prediction; only since World War 2, bombs were thrown on cities. Air raids were completely unknown in Bernadette´s time. (Afganistan became independent only in 1919 – until 1751 it was a part of Persia, during the 19th century it was under both, Persian & British/Indian influence)

“At the end”, Bernadette continued, “The Lord will pour out His blessings. Poverty, disease & hunger have an end, every tenth person will have the power to heal. There will be a Second Golden Age of mankind”, the seer concluded.

Dear friends, What if these Marian Apparitions are working to advance our etheric vision?

1861 – American Civil War: The United States House of Representatives unanimously passes a resolution guaranteeing noninterference with slavery in any state

1937 – A sit-down strike ends when General Motors recognizes the United Auto Workers

1971 – Eighty-seven countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, & Soviet Union, sign the Seabed Arms Control Treaty outlawing nuclear weapons on the ocean floor in international waters

1978 – China lifts a ban on works by Aristotle, William Shakespeare & Charles Dickens

1979 – The Iranian Revolution establishes an Islamic theocracy under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

1981 – Around 100,000 US gallons of radioactive coolant leak into the containment building of TVA Sequoyah 1 nuclear plant in Tennessee, contaminating 108 workers

1990 – Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town, South Africa after 27 years as a political prisoner

2011 – The first wave of the Egyptian revolution culminates in the resignation of Hosni Mubarak & the transfer of power to the Supreme Military Council after 18 days of protests

The Categories of Aristotle – a process of contraction…
Is there a path to expansion…..?

PUBLIC LECTURE AND EURYTHMY WORKSHOP WITH CLAUDIA FONTANA

Does one have to be a philosopher of great erudition to understand Aristotle’s gift to humanity – his Categories? Let us explore a path to an experience supported by Eurythmy.

Friday 24 March 2023 – Lecture 7 pm CT – 8:30 pm – Purchase tickets at the door or pay online
$12

Saturday 25 March 2023 – Workshop – 9 am – 12 noon CT– Purchase tickets at the door or pay online $50

at the Rudolf Steiner Branch of The Anthroposophical Society
4249 North Lincoln Avenue. Chicago, IL 60618 (map)
https://www.rschicago.org/happenings/calendar 
www.rschicago.org/donate

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

Claudia Fontana saw a Eurythmy performance when still a teenager. Unbeknownst to her at the time, that performance was the gate to her destiny path. Soon thereafter she studied Eurythmy in Vienna and subsequently spent fourteen years as a performer with the Dornach, London and Stuttgart Eurythmeum ensembles. Teaching became the next challenge which she happily met in the United States, Europe. Before Covid, she spent seven years teaching all levels in Thailand, Malaysia and China. She resides in Ann Arbor, MI still performing and teaching.

The Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Resurrection

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg,

Insights about Mary Magdalene with Faith DiVecchio

Song-Circle with Velsum, 

Eurythmy – & an artistic break out session

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT hybrid event in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & on zoom

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

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

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

PRESENTS:

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

Gerald Shepherd

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.

Nancy Poer

~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

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.

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 (mapwww.rschicago.org/donate

The Preparers

Rita Cassia

Dear friends, I thought to bring back into focus our Thought Seed project with this 10:10 Testament: In our present age we have a mighty opportunity – Every human being (Anthropos) has the inherent wisdom (Sophia) to solve the riddles of existence, & to transform both self & societyto give birth within ourselves to the being of Anthroposophia – to develop our higher ‘I’ on the earth. In the ‘Apocalypse of John: Lecture XII’ Rudolf Steiner said: “We are preparing for the preparers. The Anthroposophical spiritual movement is today but a very small flame; in the future it must develop into a mighty spiritual fire!” Our current world situation calls us to be alert to the formative forces that can either drag us down into the abyss of unconscious slavery OR these forces can be developed in awakened consciousness into a New Etheric-Sun Heart, which must begin to be enlivened even if at 1st it is just thru our Cognitive-Imagination, so that in our many incarnations we can continue this work.

Zosia Nowak

These new more conscious formative forces must be built up thru our individual efforts, we can then bring these fruits together in freedom to co-create a larger ‘Love imbued egregore‘– a shared Christic Etheric Body of Sophia-Michael – as a seed for all of human evolution, in which we consciously participate in a formative Sun-becoming process. This must be a systematic, spiritually scientific praxis, not some fantasy or illusion. It is built up & formed, step by step, in a disciplined, consistent way – a fully conscious method put into the practical application of the 4 stages of the Reverse-Cultus:

  1. Communion as pure thinking – “Spiritual Knowledge is a real communion, the beginning of a cosmic ritual that is suitable for human beings today”. We rise in our thinking to commune with the spiritual world behind sense perception.
  2. Transubstantiation or Transformation – from matter to spirit
  3. Offering a selfless meeting Ego to Ego “That good can become”
  4. Revelation of destiny unfolding as “Christ in Me”

These essential guidelines of the modern spiritual path, that were given to us a 100 years ago by Rudolf Steiner, are the New Mysteries which will prepare us to be transformed & adapted to the Social-Cognitive Art of a modern come-unity of Anthroposophia.

etheric heart ~Rudolf Steiner

BTW: Please don’t get discouraged if you can’t always join into the 10:10 Thought Seed. Perhaps you can start by setting your alarm to at least mark it. Even a split second moment of attention adds to the spark.

Here’s a wonderful Steiner verse that fits well with the growing light that hearlds the promise of Spring’s new beginnings.

Sun, thou bearer of rays,
Thy light’s power over matter
Magics life out of the earth’s
Limitless rich depths.

Heart, thou bearer of soul,
Thy light’s power over spirit
Magics life out of the human being’s
Limitless deep inwardness.

If I gaze upon the Sun
Her light speaks to me in radiance
Of the Spirit, filled with grace,
Wielding through the beings of worlds.

If I feel within my heart
The Spirit speaks its own true word
About the human being, loved by him
Through all time and eternity.

Looking upwards, I can see
In the Sun’s bright disc
The mighty heart of worlds.

Looking inwards, I can feel
In the heart’s warm beat
The human Sun ensouled.
~Rudolf Steiner

Chart via John Jardine Goss/ EarthSky.

7 February 2023 – “Speaking with the Stars”: The green comet – will pass near the red planet – Mars – in mid-February. Here’s how to see them: See that green line across our chart? That’s the ecliptic, or path the sun travels during the day. Look along that line for 2 bright reddish objects, a planet and a star. The green comet will sweep past red Mars around February 10 and 11. It’ll go on to pass the red-orange star Aldebaran, Eye of the Bull in the constellation Taurus. The comet is faint now and moving fast away from our sun. You’ll need a dark-sky to see it.

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1478 – Birthday of Thomas More, Chancellor of Enhland, author of Utopia, according to Rudolf Steiner in GA 167 & 171 he was condemed to death for betraying occult secrets.

Editorial cartoon (by Thomas Nast) depicts a defiant Pope Pius IX (1792 – 1878) as he stands on railroad tracks and attempts to block a train labelled ‘Progress, 19th Century’ with nothing more than an umbrella labelled ‘The Ecumenical Council,’ mid 19th century. The ecumenical council, First Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church, issued a statement on papal infallibility which is referred to by the cartoon caption, ‘I am infallible.’ (Photo by Stock Montage/Getty Images)

1878 – Deathday of Pope Pius IX head of the Catholic Church from 1846 to 1878, the longest verified papal reign. At the time of his election, he was seen as a champion of liberalism and reform, but the Revolutions of 1848 decisively reversed his policies. Yet he emphasized Mary’s role in salvation & promulgated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception – that Mary, the Mother of God, was conceived without original sin. His chief legacy is the dogma of papal infallibility – preserved from the possibility of error on doctrine! Pope John Paul II beatified him in 2000.

1966 – Deathday of composer Leopold van der Pals. In 1907, after four years of basic musical education in Lausanne, Van der Pals moved to Berlin where he met Rudolf Steiner, who made a great impression on him and introduced the idea of metamorphosis, derived from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. At the time, Berlin was a melting pot of musical development in the wake of the romantic era. Van der Pals experimented with new harmonic ideas and alternative cadenzas. He shaped his personal expression, a hybrid of different styles such as romanticism, impressionism, free tonality and inspiration from Russian and Nordic folklore. In 1915, due to World War I, Van der Pals moved to Arlesheim & then DornachSwitzerland.

The Women at the Tomb – A Festival of Resurrection

with Hazel Archer-Ginsberg, Insights about Mary Magdalene with Faith DiVecchio, Song-Circle with Velsum, Eurythmy – & an artistic break out session

Holy Saturday 8 April 2023

1 pm – 3pm CT hybrid event in-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago & on zoom

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

Meeting ID: 705 017 4041

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

PRESENTS:

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

Gerald Shepherd

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.

Nancy Poer

~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

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.

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 (mapwww.rschicago.org/donate